A review by fictionalkate
Lord of Misrule by Rachel Caine
2.0
WARNING: This review will contain spoilers from the first four books in the Morganville Vampires series.
Morganville is burning. Refugees are fleeing to safety wherever they can find it. Bishop has taken over and the world that Claire and her friends have come to know is in turmoil. Vampires – who they have been shown can not be trusted are now the only means to their survival. Humans and vampires must band together to overcome the greatest evil that Morganville has ever known – Amelie’s father and sire, Bishop.
Lord of Misrule was a hard book for me to get though. I found myself drifting off and thinking about all sorts of other thing whilst reading it and then when I’d go back to the page I’d be completely lost because things would just come out of nowhere and happen.
For a large part of the first fifty percent of this novel it felt like the characters were playing hide and seek. Claire would go off with someone looking for something and then they’d all have to flee. Someone would get lost and then they’d have to go find them. Then some more fleeing. More swooping in to rescue them. I like action. But there were times in this novel when I wanted Claire and Co. to just sit down and regroup.
I rarely understood Claire’s motivation behind her actions. I have grown to like the teenager the more I read of this series but in this book she really disappointed me. I did like how she’s changed in regards to her attitude when dealing with Miss Monica Morell but I grew frustrated with Claire going off half-cocked into a life-or-death situation without really thinking anything through. She was too impulsive and her actions didn’t really correlate with the book-smart girl who I’ve grown to really like.
It must be hard to write about a war when you only have one narrator and she’s telling the story from the first person perspective. And especially with Claire who seemed to be on the fringes of the action for most of it. I felt like I had no idea what was happening. All of a sudden we’d have something happen and I’d have no idea how we went from one scene to being deep in some other drama that had not been mentioned before only a few pages later.
My favourite parts of the novel were the Claire/Shane interactions. They felt well paced and sweet. I thought that these scenes were beautifully written and I loved that everything seemed to slow down and focused on the two of them trying to figure out their relationship.
Whilst I didn’t love this novel and it leaves me with a lot of questions and confusion, I hope that it’s just a bridging novel – breaching the gap between Feast of Fools (which I really enjoyed) and the sixth instalment of the series. There’s still many books to go and I am eager to find out what happens. All these cliffhangers… whilst I love the drama it creates I’m starting to wish for at least one novel without the anxious climax at the end.
Morganville is burning. Refugees are fleeing to safety wherever they can find it. Bishop has taken over and the world that Claire and her friends have come to know is in turmoil. Vampires – who they have been shown can not be trusted are now the only means to their survival. Humans and vampires must band together to overcome the greatest evil that Morganville has ever known – Amelie’s father and sire, Bishop.
Lord of Misrule was a hard book for me to get though. I found myself drifting off and thinking about all sorts of other thing whilst reading it and then when I’d go back to the page I’d be completely lost because things would just come out of nowhere and happen.
For a large part of the first fifty percent of this novel it felt like the characters were playing hide and seek. Claire would go off with someone looking for something and then they’d all have to flee. Someone would get lost and then they’d have to go find them. Then some more fleeing. More swooping in to rescue them. I like action. But there were times in this novel when I wanted Claire and Co. to just sit down and regroup.
I rarely understood Claire’s motivation behind her actions. I have grown to like the teenager the more I read of this series but in this book she really disappointed me. I did like how she’s changed in regards to her attitude when dealing with Miss Monica Morell but I grew frustrated with Claire going off half-cocked into a life-or-death situation without really thinking anything through. She was too impulsive and her actions didn’t really correlate with the book-smart girl who I’ve grown to really like.
It must be hard to write about a war when you only have one narrator and she’s telling the story from the first person perspective. And especially with Claire who seemed to be on the fringes of the action for most of it. I felt like I had no idea what was happening. All of a sudden we’d have something happen and I’d have no idea how we went from one scene to being deep in some other drama that had not been mentioned before only a few pages later.
My favourite parts of the novel were the Claire/Shane interactions. They felt well paced and sweet. I thought that these scenes were beautifully written and I loved that everything seemed to slow down and focused on the two of them trying to figure out their relationship.
Whilst I didn’t love this novel and it leaves me with a lot of questions and confusion, I hope that it’s just a bridging novel – breaching the gap between Feast of Fools (which I really enjoyed) and the sixth instalment of the series. There’s still many books to go and I am eager to find out what happens. All these cliffhangers… whilst I love the drama it creates I’m starting to wish for at least one novel without the anxious climax at the end.