Review: DRINK DEEP by Chloe Neill

Guess what everybody?! I love Ethan now!

Kidding.

Drink Deep is the fifth book in Chloe Neill's Chicagoland Vampires series. Spoiler-free summary: it's about an English lit grad student called Merit who is turned into a vampire against her will, then has to deal with a whole bunch of supernatural drama. In Drink Deep, Chicago is being threatened by an unknown magical force that's turning Lake Michigan black, the sky red, and so on. Naturally, vampires are being blamed for everything, so Merit rides to the rescue.

After Hard Bitten (review here), like most readers I was hoping for some explanation about wtf just happened??? Because wow, that came out of nowhere. Unfortunately, Drink Deep brought on only more head-scratching. All the things that bugged me about Hard Bitten are present in Drink Deep, only they're magnified by the force of Very Weak Plot. After about fifty pages of long, pointless conversations, the obvious villain being obvious, and endless descriptions of eating, I realized that I either had to DNF this book or skim through it like a mutha. I chose the latter, mainly because I was dying to read the ending.

Here are some patterns I noticed while reading:

• Ethan, Gone But Not Forgotten  Hey, did you know Ethan's gone? What are you feelings on that, Merit? We all know how close you two were. I swear to GOD every character has this conversation with Merit at some point in the book. Mallory. Lyndsey. Luc. Dolores Umbridge guy from the GP. Catcher. Jonah. I mean, a conversation reminding us that, yes, Ethan is gone, is one thing; but after the fourth, I started to get a little excitable. And by excitable I mean throwing the book on the floor and running through the house going, "It's happening again! Again again!" and laughing hysterically. It got to the point where I would drink every time the exact phrase "Ethan's gone" appeared in the dialog--and if I'd been drinking something other than water, I'd have gotten really drunk. Instead I just needed to go to bathroom.
  
• Food  I love food as much as the next person, but the food mentions are getting out of control in this series. I don't know what a "red hot" is, but I do know I don't need to read about them every twenty pages. In previous books, the noshing was amusing because it highlighted that Ethan was 1. a prig, and 2. not of this century. Now it feels more like these novels should be renamed Caroline Merit: No Reservations.
• Jonah  As we all know, I'm not a fan of Ethan (see here and here and also here), but he did make the books interesting. He had personality. Jonah, Drink Deep's boy toy du jour, has ZERO personality. I liked him better when he was all grumbly and hated Merit. Does she HAVE to be attractive to every single person with a penis she comes across?
  
• And speaking of characters...  Inconsistency much? It seems like there have been major personality transplants in some of these characters. Take Morgan, for example--he's supposed to be the nice guy option, or at least he was in Some Girls Bite (review here). Now he's being described as having "the attitude of a sulking, bitter teenager." Say what? Mallory, Merit's practical bestie, is suddenly a raving lunatic; and Ethan was apparently off on a retreat to pick up male sensitivity in the twenty-first century. It seems like there are a lot of changes with the characters, but not much development leading up to it.
  

As for the ending, I've read other reviews where it was said the reunion between Merit and Ethan felt emotionally distant. I actually disagree with that; I thought Neill did a good job with the emotional aspects of Ethan's return. But it did seem like Ethan came back to life--if you know what I mean--awfully quickly. Like, aren't there tests someone can do? Take his blood pressure? Once again there wasn't much of an explanation for what happened, but everyone seemed to accept Ethan as hunky-dorey and move on. Basically, that feeling of wtf just happened???? Still having it.

Am I going to read the next Chicagoland Vampires book? Of course! I need to find out if Ethan starts hungering for brrrraaaaiiiiiinnnssss. I hope he does.

Chicago 4.0 by Chloe Neill + Giveaway!

Chloe Neill, one of my favorite writers, is releasing a new book in July.  To help spread the word, I asked her if she'd write a guest post about some new Chicago locations we'll see in Twice Bitten and other future releases (note:  all the photos above were taken by Chloe herself).



Hello, everyone! I'm writing this from the Loop neighborhood in downtown Chicago, just across from the Chicago River and a few blocks from Lake Michigan. I'm in town for today's 25th Annual Greater Chicago Food Depository Hunger Walk--and I'm proud to say we've raised over $1,800 to date!

I'm also here to location scout for the next Chicagoland Vampires novel--the follow-up to July 6's TWICE BITTEN--which will be released in July 2011. During my last scouting trip, I visited Ukrainian Village and checked out church architecture, and did a bit of scouting through Wicker Park and down Damen Avenue. You may recall that Mallory's house is a Wicker Park brownstone, and a good chunk of TWICE BITTEN takes place in Ukrainian Village, including a church modeled after St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church.

This time, I'm mostly scouting locations in the Loop, looking for some interesting sites for both the Dark Elite and Chicagoland Vampires series. St. Sophia's, the boarding school in FIRESPELL, is located just north of the Loop on Erie, so I'm looking into locations in which it might be interesting to host future Dark Elite events. I'm very excited about the Rookery, which has a fabulous exterior and gorgeous interior. I also love the industrial look of El track struts, and can only imagine vampirish things occur there.

I also got to pay my first visit to Chicago's amazing Harold Washington Library, with its gorgeous stone facade and owls perched on the corners. It's also ginormous, and the 9th floor hosts an amazing indoor "Winter Garden" space with a greenhouse cage-like roof.

[Little known fact: In the first draft of SOME GIRLS BITE, Ethan and Merit met for the first time outside the library. She was brooding over the fact that she wouldn't be able to visit the library during business (daylight) hours. He feared she'd expose herself to the sun waiting for the library to open, and came to her rescue. It was so NOT appropriate for their personalities.]

I also got to pay a visit to the fabulous Field Museum--Chicago's natural history museum. The Field Museum will play a key part in a future Dark Elite novel, so I wanted to get a look at the space and a feel for interesting scene possibilities--including the totem pole section of the Ancient Americas display. Truth be told, I also wanted to get a look at Sue, the Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton. Tres cool!

Also on the agenda for this trip: Another visit to Hyde Park and the University of Chicago, some purchasing of Blackhawks goods (!!!), and a little more Wicker Park action. It's amazing how much you can cram into a trip if you plan carefully. :)

Well, that's all for now. I've got to grab my maps and hit the road again. Thanks for reading today!


Thank you so much, Chloe!  I loved your "deleted scene" from Some Girls Bite, although dying to get into the library is going a little far even for me. ;)


Chloe Neill is offering a copy of Twice Bitten to one lucky reader of this blog! Just leave a comment on this post (make sure to include a valid e-mail address), and I will pull a name randomly.  US & Canada only; contest ends Sunday, June 27th, at 6 PM EST.

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