Daylighters (Morganville Vampires, #15)

by Rachel Caine

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

I am such a huge fan of this series, I was so excited to read Daylighters, but I really wasn't looking forward to the end of the series. The Morganville Vampires series is one of my favourite series, and so reading Daylighters was pretty bittersweet. And sadly, it wasn't my favourite story.

Morganville has been taken over by the Daylight Foundation, an organisation set of bring peace to those who have been terrorised by vampires. The vampires have been forced into an enclave, and the residents are feeling safe. The houses have had a make-over, people are no longer rushing home when they're out, and everyone is happy to have the vampires off the streets. This is the Morganville Claire comes home to, and she and her friends are split up humans and vampires - Claire, Shane and Eve, and Oliver, Myrnin, Jesse, and Michael. The Daylighters seem to think they can help the vampires as well as the humans, but there's something not quite right about head Daylighter, Fallon. Now Claire must do all she can to free her friends - but is that the right thing to do, when the humans are finally no longer scared?

As I said, I was so looking forward to this story, and the idea behind it was just awesome! Fallon was incredibly creepy with his normal, nice manner, having such bad ideas - for the good of the people! - and seeming to make sense. I loved Claire's moral dilemma with trying to work out what she should do. These are her friends and they are locked up. But these friends are vampires, and have caused so many problems for years. If she helps them to get out, she'll be condemning the humans back to a life of fear. Yet her friends have no freedom. What's the right thing to do?

There was a lot of potential for this story to get crazy dangerous, like other books in the series. I was waiting for it, eager for it... but it never really happened. There was tension all the way through, but things never seemed to get too bad. They headed in that direction, but then things seemed to conveniently work out. That really bugged me, so much. The way the story was going, you knew beforehand just how conveniently things were going to go before they happened. One of the things I loved most about this series was how unpredictable it was, but not so much with Daylighters. And there were several characters who just seemed to be left in the middle of things. Shane, Amelie, Myrnin - things happened with them, but we didn't find out until much later what the outcome of those things were.

Claire was on her own for most of this book, or skipping from being with one character to the next, and mostly everything that went right was her own doing (hurrah for character development and Claire finally being able to save others on her own, when she could barely save herself against Monica in Glass Houses - is that the point? She does it all in the final book?), and I really missed the other characters so much. It's the last book, and they weren't in it all that much. Monica got what I can only call a brief cameo. Monica. Michael was locked up, and Shane and Eve had their own things happening away from Claire. It was just weird. I really wanted to see my favourite four together kicking butt, and it never really happened.

All my issues are with this particular story though, not with the end of the series. Despite some rather awesome things that happened at the very end (which I would like to have seen in more detail!), it doesn't really feel like the end of the series. It didn't feel like a definitive ending, that there could never be another Morganville Vampires story. It's just the end of this story, and it felt very much like there could be more to come. Like it was decided there wouldn't be any more after this one, rather than making this specifically the very last book. But Caine says at the end of the book this is the very last one, so I find that kind of frustrating. I knew Daylighters would be the last book, but it doesn't feel like much of an end to me. There's no real closure for the series as a whole, I feel. Especially as I'm not going to see Claire, Shane, Eve and Michael again. I would have preferred a more closed door if there's no chance of there being more Morganville Vampires stories.

Overall, I'm kind of disappointed in this book. But there are all the others in the series that are awesome, and make up for this one. Just wish the series ended on a high rather than a low. Still worth a read if you like the series, despite the negatives - it still has all those awesome characters, after all.

Thank you to Allison and Busby for the review copy.