Yes, it’s another Morganville Vampires book review. For me these things are like text crack for so many reasons, but chief among them is that the series creates a world where vampires are well aware of their outnumbered position and are cautious to avoid being hunted to extinction. One thing that’s been a pet peeve of mine with the stereotypical vampire story is their indiscriminate killing sprees combined with the “What is this thing?!” trope. If a vampire left half as many drained, fang-pocked bodies lying around, there’s no way vampires could be a well kept secret, is there? And yet, the tired trope plays out over and over in horror.
But not in Morganville. Instead, the vampires have created a town where they rule silently over a population of humans who can’t leave thanks to a barrier created by a computer system augmented with a vampire’s brain. Or rather, that’s been the case for a long time, and in the last two books, the vampire brain who ran things went crazy and tried to expose the town with the help of an overly ambitious human. Ada, the vampire running the barrier, was rebooted, but ended up killing herself, leaving the town exposed.
So at the start of Ghost town, Claire is tasked with the impossible, creating a barrier to protect the town without using a brain. Myrnin, her vampire boss, helps her to craft a new system, but soon after it goes active, people begin going crazy. The machine affects both humans and vampires, and soon everyone is losing their minds, even elder vampires like Amelie. Claire must find a way to shut down the machine, a task made even more difficult because Myrnin has also lost his memories and has reverted into his former maddened state.
Before going into this book, I had a theory that I knew how the problem with the barrier would be resolved, but it turns out I was wrong, and the solutions at the end was something of a rude shock. But for the time being, the town is back under the barrier, and the vampires are safe from exposure.
There’s a few other twists that happen along the way, and those will have repercussions for later books, I’m sure. But I can’t talk about those without spoiling the story. But I will say, I think it’s funny how this is a series with amoral vampires hunting humans, and yet, I feel worried when bad stuff happens to them. That’s a pretty good story to make me worry about the monsters.
So, I’ll give Ghost Town 4 stars, and I’m already looking forward to starting the next book in the series, Bite Club. I’m pretty sure that will be my next review, but maybe I’ll try to read another book at the same time to break up all these Morganville Vampires reviews. That’s assuming that I can find the self-control to stop reading for few chapters and move to something else. It could happen, but then again, I am a happy vampire addict, so it might not. We’ll see how it goes.