So in my review of the first in the Morganville Vampire series, I said that I guardedly recommended the first book.

And I was kind of reserving judgement until I could see if Ms. Caine could deliver (or at least keep up) one the promising heroine and scenario she'd started in the first book.

And the judgement is....hmmmmm. In the first book, the characters were awesome, and the scenario of vampires living in a small town where everyone knows didn't win me over.

In the second book, that flipped. The characters came out stale to me. Even the plucky heroine didn't seem to give me enough of her, she just felt like a pair of eyes through which we saw the action.

On the other hand, the society of the vampires, the condition of the residents in the town, the political intrigue, all that became much more developed and thus believable.

The stakes (tee hee) are also upped quite considerably in the second novel where one of the heroes becomes a vampire and another is being forced to pledge themselves to a master vampire as their human servant.

So despite my feeling that having the girls say "ooh, he's hot" or "wow even his feet are sizzling hot" does not constitute character or relationship development in my book, I think I still have to keep reading this series.

Off to the library for the third book.

Still, Guardedly Recommended.

(maybe I would like this more if I were like, I don't know, twenty years younger?)