Dead Girls' Dance by Rachel Caine

[slowfox]

Book 2 of the Morganville Vampires series is... a little off the pace, somehow, compared to the first instalment, which was fun and entertaining.

In this instalment, Claire (our heroine) and her house buddies (Eve, Shane and Michael) have to deal with the storm Shane's father kicks up when he returns to Morganville intent on devamping the place for good 'n all.

But somehow Caine manages to get bogged down in the tale's telling, and we get some odd diversions thrown in (the titular dance, by the way, is... almost incidental to the plot; sure, things happen, but I was expecting the event to be slightly more pivotal than it proved).

From being a timid, bookish, geekish kinda girl in Book 1, Claire seems to have had something of a gung-ho character transplant in Book 2, and ... I don't think it works quite as well. She's still on the wrong side of Queen Cordy Monica, and has definitely snubbed at least one of the head vamps, so life certainly doesn't promise to be easy later on.

Eve's brother is mentioned, almost as an aside, and I'm guessing that he's going to feature in later tomes: it would certainly make sense, since a) Claire's friends with Eve and b) Claire would appear to be in his 'target' age range. It also looks like Claire's going to sign herself over to be Amelie's pet (can't imagine that going down too well with Shane. Or Eve. Michael obviously wouldn't get to have a say)...

So not quite the fun read the first was, but I'll read onward as and when my source procures and reads additional instalments.