Glass Houses
Book One of The Morganville Vampires
by Rachel Caine
Rachel Caine is well known for her Weather Warden Series but the question most readers were probably wondering about was whether or not Rachel Caine would be capable of creating an intriguing tale for a younger audience without losing her older one. I am pleased to report that Caine is very capable of this and I am most eagerly awaiting book two of this series.
In book one of this new series we meet Claire Danvers, a freshman at Texas Prairie University. Claire is a smart and intelligent girl who managed to skip a grade and graduated from her high school with top honors. It’s a shame though that despite the many acceptance letters to schools of high regard, her parents feel she’s too young to go off to school. A compromise of sorts is made and Claire finds herself attending TPU which is closer to home but lacks the prestige of the other schools that did accept her.
Things wouldn’t be so bad if that were the only problem for her but alas Claire made the mistake of correcting the inaccurate account of one of her peers who thought World War ll involved the Chinese. And this girl is not just your ordinary “popular” girl either. Oh-no, she had to be a child from a family under the protection of a vampire. But Claire doesn’t know about the vampires – yet.
Welcome to Morganville, Texas. The town might look like your average rural town but this town is anything but normal. The real people in power in this town isn’t the human inhabitants but the vampires that no one but the insiders know exist. If you’re one of the lucky ones you’re born to a family that has a patron vampire. You wear their mark and are safe from attacks by other vampires. Those who move in or just not that lucky don’t have a patron, so they’re a snack waiting to happen.
After it becomes apparent that Monica and her followers will not stop torturing and tormenting Claire until she’s well and dead Claire sets out to find somewhere off campus to live. Problem is she’s still underage and anyone putting her up runs the risk of incurring Monica’s wrath as well as the law’s. In her search for a home and friends Claire finds the Glass House and its inhabitants, Micahel, Shane, and Eve. They’re outcasts in that they refuse to bend to the town’s laws and bow before the feet of the vampires.
The idea that vampires have complete control and say over this town is intriguing but at the same time puzzling. For one thing, everything is conducted in a precise manner. A certain percentage of college kids go missing as a tribute to the vampires and the people all pay a blood price to the vampires. There is order and there are eyes watching everywhere yet it took the vampires some time before they figured out Claire was at the Glass House and even more time to realize that she had been clued in to the real happenings in the town. This seemed really odd and off considering how much control the vampires were supposed to have.
And of course my mind boggled when the vampires pursuing Claire and Eve had to resort to mind control to try to get one of them to unlock the car door so that they could reach in and nab the girls. What vampire can’t just wrench the door open or break the glass? Somehow that scene seemed a bit absurd and it really came off as though the author was trying to find someway to make sure the story’s heroine made it out safely.
Other than odd little instances like the aforementioned I found this book to be a captivating read. The characters were amazingly well fleshed out and absolutely believable. For one thing, Caine’s portrayal of Monica was a dead-on example of how a villain (although she’s the main baddie) should be. You were not simply told that she was a “bad girl” and that you should hate her. The readers were given ample opportunity to see the circumstances behind her actions as well a chance to observe all the facets of her character. In the end, if you chose to hate or dislike her (and really it’s hard not to) you felt justified in your perception of the character.
This held true for all of the characters in the book, from lowly shopkeepers to recurring characters, all of them had a depth to them that most authors cannot be bothered to give to all characters. The truly marvelous thing is that Caine did all of this without having to prattle on and on in detail about each character. This is how characterization should be.
And the ending, can we say cliffhanger? Readers will be left on the edge of their seats, hands gripping tightly to their books as they watch the story unfold before their eyes. The ending, the resolution, though not entirely surprising will still give the readers a start. The final scene will have readers marking the release of the next book on their calendar and counting down the days. Dead for good or still alive? That’s all I’ll say about the last bit.
I would highly recommend that you go out and pick this novel up. It might be written for a younger audience but Caine does a marvelous job telling this tale that readers of all ages will be in for a thrill.
Joana’s rating: 
