Bite Club: The Morganville Vampires (Morganville Vampires, #10)

by Rachel Caine

After discovering that vampires populate her town, college student Claire Danvers knows that the undead just want to live their lives. But someone else wants them to get ready to rumble.

There's a new extreme sport getting picked up on the Internet: bare- knuckle fights pitting captured vampires against each other-or humans. Tracking the remote signal leads Claire to discover that what started as an online brawl will soon threaten everyone in Morganville...

• ISBN10: 0451234685
• ISBN13: 9780451234681
• Publish Date: 4 October 2011 (first published 1 May 2011)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: US
• Publisher: Penguin Books Australia
• Imprint: Signet
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 368
• Language: English
• URL: https://penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780451234681

Reviews

[jeannamichel]

I'm slowly working my way through The Morganville Vampires series. My hope is to finish the series by this year. Despite the series being so long, the books go by super fast. Their fast pace, with the writing and action, really make it easy to read.

In Bite Club, Caine gives us both Claire and Shane's perspectives in certain sections in order to let the readers get the whole story. The climax wasn't as climatic as I thought it was going to be and went down without much fanfare. I'm looking forward to the next book!

[Angie]

After that exciting ending to Ghost Town, I had really high hopes for the direction the series would take in Bite Club. While I did enjoy this installment, the first two-thirds or so felt like filler. It was fun filler, but filler all the same. When it starts, the residents of the Glass House just received a flyer for a new gym in town. It's not just an ordinary gym, but one where humans can learn to fight against vampires. Of course, Shane jumps at the chance to beat up a vampire. Meanwhile, more weird things are happening and Claire has to figure it out before it's too late.

Bite Club was quite different than the previous books. The main reason being that we get Shane's POV. There's something really weird going on with him. It's more than just his new gym obsession. He's much quicker to lose his temper and he's not being the nicest to Claire. While it was interesting to get into Shane's head for once, I honestly don't think those sections were needed. I didn't feel like they added much except for extra pages. It's clear that something is wrong with him based on his interactions with everyone around him, so his sections were like more filler material.

The last third of Bite Club was really great though! Things finally pick up, we learn the truth about this new gym, and lots of exciting things happen which actually push the plot forward. It still didn't feel like the natural path for the series to take, and was a bit silly, but at least stuff got accomplished! I just wish it hadn't taken that long to get there. I also really liked how Claire's dream of going to MIT was finally brought up again, even if it's probably the worst time ever for her to have to think about that.

Bite Club was a fun addition to the series, even though it did feel out of place at times. I'm certainly excited to know what's coming next for Morganville's residents now that one threat is out of the way.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.

[nitzan_schwarz]

I think this was my least favorite book of the bunch :(

But good riddance, Bishop!

[Jo]

Morganville, Texas is a quiet college town where humans and vampires live in relative peace. But lately a great deal of blood is being spilled - not in a feeding frenzy, but for someone's twisted idea of entertainment. After discovering that vampires populate Morganville - and surviving a number of adventures with her new night-dwelling friends - college student Claire Danvers has come to realise that for the most part, the undead just want to live their lives. But someone else wants them to get ready to rumble. There's a new extreme sport being broadcast over the Internet: bare-knuckle fights pitting captured vampires against one another - or, worse, against humans. Tracking the out-of-town signal leads Claire - accompanied by a loyal group of friends and frenemies - to discover that what started as an online brawl will soon threaten everyone in Morganville. And if they want to survive, they'll have to do a lot more than fight... From Amazon UK

I am such a huge fan of this series, as you all know, that I was expecting to be blown away yet again. And I was because of Caine's amazing ability to come up with a new plot everytime, keep the story unpredictable, and keep her characters so life like!

However, I must say, this one disappointed me a little. I have read better books in this series. And this was mainly because, in the greatr scheme of things, not a huge deal happened. Any other series and this wouldn't be a problem for me; I don't need lots happening to enjoy a book, and I did enjoy this one. But I am so used to this series being chock full of action and danger and edge-of-the-seat moments, and that's not really what you get in this book. It was much more of a slow burner, building up to the Big Event rather than being as action packed.

Bite Club is more of an emotional novel than the others. Claire is worrying about her relationships with so many people for so many different reasons and she is a very stressed Claire Bear in this book. But I'm not the kind of person who gets all that upset along with the character unless I actually believe things will end horribly wrong, and despite the plot, I didn't. Throughout the whole book, no matter how bad things got, I always had in my head that the characters were far too strong for them to not beat the emotional side of things - hell, they'd come up against worst physical problems. I won't tell you whether I was wrong to believe this or not, you'll just have to read and find out.

There was a really, really good thing about this book though. Most of the books in the series are third person perspective following Claire, and Bite Club is the same, but we also get into Shane's head. We get his first person perspective on events that happen in the book just after or just before they happen. How he's feeling, why he's feeling it, what he's going to do, etc. And although it was really cool - hello, inside Shane's head! - it was also completely necessary. Shane plays a much bigger part in this novel than he does in the others; he's always been a main character, but Claire is always the one we're with at all times of the day, but we also get to be with Shane too, even when Claire isn't around, and we need to be. Because things are happening and with both people, and we need both sides of the story to know what's going on. It was pretty awesome, and I really hope to see more of this in the next two books. Eve and Michael get more of a part to play in the next two, perhaps?

Overall, still a really good book, and a fantastic story, but not as good as I'm used to. I'd still highly recommend it to any Morganville Vampires fans, but just don't expect stakes to be flying as much as they normal.

From Once Upon a Bookcase - YA book blog

[Linda]

WOW, another wild ride, and poor Shane and Clare. Those bad vamps are always up to some bad stuff, and this was no difference. It's hard to believe that Clare actually turned down MIT, though, I wouldn't have thought that at all.