by Terrance Mc Arthur

Info on how to win a copy of Daylighters at the end of this review.

Morganville, Texas, has been a vampire town for generations. Humans have lived in fear and oppression…until now.

In Rachel Caine’s Daylighters, Claire Danvers and her friends (human and vamp), return to Texas from fighting an anti-vampire organization, only to find that the Daylighters have taken over Morganville. Humans walk the streets without fear, houses have fresh coats of paint, and new homes are being built. It’s wonderful, but there is the abandoned shopping mall on the edge of town that has armed guards on the outside…and is filled with vampires wearing explosive shock-collars. That’s not so wonderful.

The leader of the Daylighters, who has his own secrets, promises a “cure” for the vampires, but how do you stop a vampire from being a vampire, outside of staking him into a permanent death? The humans are happy to be free of their bloodsucking masters and their taxes that were paid at the blood bank, and they don’t have kind thoughts for people who seemed to play well with vampires…like Claire, who worked for Myrnin, a mad scientist with fangs…and Eve, Claire’s Goth buddy who is married to Michael, an accidental vampire.

Claire and boyfriend Shane bounce in and out of custody, and in and out of their newly-repainted home (The inside was not changed, because the house wouldn’t let anybody in—the place really has a mind of its own), where their teen-age ghost friend, Miranda, hangs out in a hidden attic room with her rock-star posters. People they trust have switched allegiance, sworn enemies provide help in the nick of time, and Shane is forced to turn against Claire by an infected bite. In other words, it’s business as usual in Morganville.

Daylighters is Caine’s fifteenth book in the Morganville Vampires series…and the last (unless she comes up with a pressing need to tell another story, and you know how vampires have that annoying habit of coming back when you think they’ve ridden off into the sunrise for the last time). Claire was sixteen in the first book, and she hasn’t turned twenty, yet. A lot of action has happened in three years. Caine has, amazingly, not run out of ideas. There is fire extinguisher mayhem, sizzling staked vampires, an uphill version of dumpster diving, and cross-country busing. It’s quite an adventure.

Rest in peace, Morganville.

To enter to win a copy of Daylighters, simply email KRL at krlcontests@gmail[dot]com by replacing the [dot] with a period, and with the subject line “Daylighters,” or comment on this article. A winner will be chosen December 21, 2013. U.S. residents only.

Check out more fantasy book reviews in our fantasy and fangs section.

Terrance V. Mc Arthur is a California-born, Valley-raised librarian/entertainer/writer. He lives in Sanger, four blocks from the library, with his wife, his daughter, and a spinster cat.