Five books in I must say I was beginning to think there was little more I could say about the Morganville vampire series
but as I said in my review of the previous volume, Feast of Fools, the winds are changing in Morganville and Rachel Caine is not an author to churn out the same novel over and over no matter what the number of books in the series may make you inclined to believe.
War has come to Morganville, between Amelie, Founder and hitherto most powerful vampire in town, and her father, the callous brutal Bishop who wishes to repay his daughter for her past indiscretions and return to the “natural order” of enmity between vampire and human kind. Claire Danvers and her friends are, as usual, caught in the middle. To make matters worse, Shane's father, an unhinged vampire slayer with a grudge, is rumoured to be back in town,
vampires are disappearing without explanation and a storm of epic proportions is on a direct course for Morganville.
For a large portion of this book I was under the impression that the wind had truly left Rachel Caine's sails for this volume. Aside from the opening action sequence and a few odd instances here and there the action is on a dip from some of the previous books and certainly far less than you would expect for a book displaying the outbreak of a war between immortal badasses. I found the trademark climax sequence a chapter or two behind the end of the book to be somewhat unfulfilling as well and I think part of the reason for that is that, without giving too much away, the characters themselves seem to see precious little of it. In Feast of Fools, Claire was right in the thick of the action of the feast, witnessed every detail of the action. In a similar vein to the first of the Twilight novels, Claire, our viewpoint into the world, is rendered unconscious at several obvious opportunities for epic action and much of the calamity that befalls our heroes either happens off-stage, so-to-speak, or is the result of some natural phenominon.
It was only right at the end of the book that I realised I had entirely missed the point of this book. In past volumes Caine has talked about drugs, abuse, bullying and all sorts of other horrors that really exist thinly disguised by the oogly boogly vampires. This volume's theme is very
different, more subtle and therefore requiring a more subtle book all around.
Lord of Misrule is about hatred, pure and simple. It is about what hate looks like, how it poisons our deeds and sight and mind, how it clouds our rational judgement. It is about the ugly side of humanity and how that ugly side is nearly always the result of some hatred of the unknown, the different or people we have simply been taught to loathe.
I have to be honest, the previous four volumes were all about curling up on the sofa and relaxing, no real intelligent thought required. They were brilliant books but part of their brilliance was that you didn't really have to think about them to enjoy them. Caine has raised the bar yet again with Lord of Misrule, but for many it is going to seem like the poorest tale in the series so far and I think that's probably unjustified. Lord of Misrule is different, but not worthy of loathing.
Another element to my slight disappointment was that I was expecting, for reasons unknown, that this would be the final volume in the series when in fact there are (at least) two further books to come. The obligatory cliff-hanger ending to this book is as nail-biting as any other in the series although in many respects it is very similar to that in book four, a re-shuffling of the pack if you will rather than a massive development in the plot.
To say that I've got mixed feelings about this book would be an understatement but the deciding factor is, I think, that while reading this book I once again found myself wondering when, rather than whether, someone will ever make a film out of these books. They are cinematic, generally action packed, the characters are compelling, the stories intelligent and they are every bit as good as the Twilight series; in fact the two compliment each other surprisingly well. If my prevailing thought is still “I would love to see these books on the big screen” then that is an endorsement of the book as far as I am concerned. I would read this book if you have the other four for two simple reasons. Firstly, you'll need to in order to read books six and seven. Second, despite all the differences in tone and pace this is still one of the best vampire fiction flicks to be released in recent years.
Oh, and if you're waiting for my review of the sixth book, my apologies but apparently we Brits aren't getting it for another three or four months. Nice...