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Carpe Corpus

Rachel Caine

Published 2009       358 pages

Summary (from the book jacket)

In the small town of Morganville, vampires and humans lived in (relative) peace - until all the rules got rewritten when the evil vampire Bishop arrived, looking for the lost book of vampire secrets. He's kept a death grip on the town ever since. Now an underground resistance is brewing, and in order to contain it, Bishop must go to even greater lengths.

He vows to obliterate the town and all its inhabitants - the living and the undead. Claire Danvers and her friends are the only ones who stand in his way. But even if they defeat Bishop, will the vampires ever be content to go back to the old rules, after having had such a taste of power?

The Review

Carpe Corpus is the sixth book in Rachel Caine’s popular Morganville Vampires series. Aimed at the Young Adult market, these books have teenaged protagonists and feature some coming-of-age themes but they are entertaining enough to appeal to a wider audience than just teens. Carpe Corpus sees the culmination of the story arc that has been running through the series since book 3, Midnight Alley. For this reason it’s necessary to read the books in series order so I wouldn’t recommend reading Carpe Corpus unless you have read all the books preceding it.

The storyline for the series so far has seen Claire tasked with helping to find a cure for the sickness that afflicts all the vampires in Morganville. She assists the dangerously mad vampire Myrnin with his experiments into the illness but his periods of sanity are getting shorter and he did accidentally kill his past assistants in fits of madness. In addition to her work with Myrnin, Claire has her college classes and her budding relationship with boyfriend Shane. Bishop, a nasty vampire who makes the original vampire residents of Morganville look like poster children for liberal tolerance, has taken over the town and magically made Claire his evil minion. Shane is once again locked in vampire jail with his father awaiting a fate that’s worse than death. All-in-all there are plenty of storylines to wrap up in Carpe Corpus, making it the most action-packed book of the series so far.

My main criticism of Lord of Misrule, the previous book in this series, was that the characters ran around a lot but nothing actually seemed to happen to further the story. Carpe Corpus has none of these problems. From the first pages the plotline moves forward with purpose and keeps delivering character and plot developments right through to the final page. The book even wraps up storylines from previous books that I’d forgotten about in all the excitement of Bishop’s Morganville coup!

Carpe Corpus isn’t just action driven. There is romance for Claire as her slow burning relationship with Shane develops further and all of the major vampire characters, such as Amelie, Sam and Myrnin seem to gain new depths as more of their characters are developed.

There are more macabre shocks in store when Myrnin finally reveals the source of Morganville portals to Claire. He made a difference engine over a hundred or so years ago that still works to power the portals today but only a vampire could invent a vampire computer…

Rachel Caine is on top form with Carpe Corpus making it the best book in the Morganville Vampires series so far. It has everything any teen vampire fan could want – fast paced action, dangerous adventure and first-love romance. With evil vampires, mad vampires, good vampires and a vampire computer, magic and mayhem are never more than one step away. Bloody brilliant!

Note: The UK edition of the Carpe Corpus also contains “Murdered Out” - a brand new and exclusive Morganville short story only available in this edition. This sweet short story chronicles Shane’s first foray into the world of car ownership and makes a nice bonus feature for this book.

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