Touch the Dark (Cassandra Palmer, Book 1) by Karen Chance Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Touch the Dark (Cassandra Palmer, Book 1)
Book Review: Great Paranormal Thriller!
Summary: 5 Stars
Touch the Dark is a fast-paced dark fantasy with a wry sense of humor and great characterization. It opens with Cassandra Palmer, a clairvoyant on the run, finding her own obituary pasted onto her computer screen. The newspaper clipping informs her that she will die in a little over an hour. It's a warning, she assumes, from the vampire who had been chasing her for years. Cassie had been his personal clairvoyant until she found out that he had her parents killed in order to use her abilities for himself. She tried her best to destroy him three years ago, but failed, and now he wants revenge.
Cassie gets away, but to stay safe, she needs to cut a deal with the vampire Senate, a group who rules the other vampires with an iron fist. They are not known for being sympathetic, but they are willing to make an exception in her case in order to control her power. Cassie has to find a way to retain control over both her independance and her head, in the middle of a vampire war that threatens to destroy her world.
Touch the Dark manages to incorporate mystery, action-adventure and romance into the story-line, yet keeps the fantasy foremost. If you like modern fantasy with a bite to it, you'll love Touch the Dark!
Book Review: Psychics, Mage and Vampires- Promising Debut
Summary: 3 Stars
Coming from the Roc Fantasy stable gives this debut an air of establishment given that stablemates include the best selling Harry Dresden series by Jim Butcher, as well as Rachel Caine's Weather Warden series among many others. Chance almost measures up to these stablemates; she creates a unique world in terms of urban fantasy with enough twists and quirks to make the story unpredictable.
The novel's protagonist is Cassie, a young woman who happens to have psychic powers, whose parents were killed when she was 5 years old. Cassie grew up in a mansion, under the rule of Tony a vampire from the age of Henry the 8th, who uses her precognitive abilities for his own gain. The novel begins in media res after Cassie has been on the run from Tony's goons for nearly 3 years; one night she receives her own obituary via her computer, believing it to be a threat from Tony she goes on the run once again. Her major flaw is her basic good heart and she is loathe to leave her roommate Tomas possibly vulnerable to Tony's vampires but when she goes to warn him, she is kidnapped by the Vampire Senate.
Cassie discovers that the vampire senate want to protect her, for their own ends, a chilling thought in itself given that the senate defines the word ruthless. She feels utterly betrayed when it's revealed that Thomas was sent by the senate to keep her safe and report on her powers. The senate is locked in a power struggle with a renegade vampire who has challenged and killed several key members of the council, in the hopes of gaining ultimate power for himself. If that wasn't bad enough, the mage circles want to claim Cassie as one of their own; the ones who control her also control the new powers that she has manifested which include an ability to shift through time.
Good points in this novel's favour include that Chance's world building is perhaps one of the most detailed and well thought out political and social structures for supernatural beings that I've come across in a modern urban fantasy. Her characters, in particular Cassie, are likeable enough. Cassie is accepting of her faults and vulnerable enough to have the reader rooting for her; the other secondary characters are for the most part nicely crafted, but the novel has a few very distracting flaws. The main flaw is that Chance doesn't handle the pacing of the novel well, which leads to the exposition seeming more heavy handed than it is, as the bulk of the backstory takes over huge chunks of the plot which would have been better used building the tension. Other minor flaws include;
The action scenes are initially well paced and packed with tension, but once Cassie is ensconced in the senate the narrative flow is frequently disturbed to accommodate entire pages of backstory. Whilst interesting and well thought out the backstory threatens to overwhelm the main plot.
The romance angle is awkwardly handled; Tomas seems to reciprocate Cassie's feelings for him, but there is an abrupt and confusing switch as Mircea, a vampire that Cassie once looked upon as a fond uncle, is suddenly promoted to romantic lead.
It may be a fault in me as a reader, but the time shifting powers and the plot arc that Cassie might be the chosen psychic to become Pythia, a position that dates back to the oracle of Delphi, really threw me out of the story and confused the hell out of me.
The main cast of the novel is largely formed of real historical figures; Mircea is the second son of Vlad the impaler, Cleopatra is the senate's head, Jack the Ripper is the Senates' personal torturer, the man in the iron mask, Raphael, Christopher Marlowe is the senate's spy master and Rasputin, the vicious challenger to the senate's power. Some of these additions work and are handled quite well, but for many readers I suspect this historical cast list will wear thin.
This started out very promisingly but lost my interest midway. Stylistically, Chance is reminiscent of early Laurell K Hamilton and aside from a few flaws has real potential to create a solid urban fantasy with these characters, provided someone takes the time to encourage her to edit and drip in her backstory.
The second in the series is titled 'Claimed by Shadow'
Book Review: Not a Laurell K Hamilton novel
Summary: 4 Stars
This book was obviously commissioned by some editor who wanted the writer to produce an 'Anita Blake' style novel. But Cassandra Palmer is no Anita, and Karen Chance is not Laurell K Hamilton. I won't go into the story as the other reviewers have already done so. We get metaphysical sex, French Vampires with a double barrelled first name, a heroine with growing powers, etc. Sound familiar?
Definitely a readable book, but it doesn't have the strong characterisation of Hamilton's novels, nor a heroine who knows how to kick ass. Compared to Anita, Cassandra is very young and clueless. Despite the lack of good characterisation, it was an enjoyable book.
Book Review: Better than Anita
Summary: 5 Stars
No, as another reviewer commented, this isn't an Anita Blake book. Thank God! It has an excellent plot, male characters who aren't mentally challenged doormats there to show off how smart the heroine is, and a heroine who doesn't think that killing things is the only way to solve a problem. It's an excellent dark fantasy, and I can't wait to read more from this author. And I really, really hope she never turns into a Laurell Hamilton!Book Review: Not another Anita Blake - a book with its own strengths and foibles
Summary: 4 Stars
I suppose at first glance a reader might think this is another Anita Blake novel - we have a feisty heroine who is surrounded by vampires and keeps getting herself into complicated situations. Like the Anita Blake series, you're never entirely sure what's going on and the roster of things-that-go-bump-in-the-night seems to grow as you move through the book.
I don't think this IS another Anita Blake book - our heroine Cassandra Palmer isn't a vampire hunter, for a start - she's a Clairvoyant. She was raised by Tony a vampire after he had her parents killed and she eventually managed to escape him. The book starts with her discovering her obituary on her computer with the details of her death - to take place in an hour's time. She knows that Tony must have found her and is sending his vampire hit squad after her, so she must flee. First of all, though, she needs to warn Tomas her roommate as he is at risk. When at the club with Tomas the vampire hit men arrive and Cassie has to try and escape and to defend herself and Tomas and, at this point, she is plunged into something a lot more complex than she had ever imagined.
This complexity is at the heart of the book - Cassie finds herself dealing with vampires, ghosts, mages, witches, sybils... the list goes on and on and I, for one, got a bit confused between the Dark Circle and the Light Circle and the Vampire Senate and all the rest of it. The story is packed with events, discussions, characters... it is difficult to keep up with everything and all the plots, twists, different viewpoints, changes of motivation etc.
Cassie is certainly not Anita Blake - she doesn't kill vampires, for a start. She's perhaps more passive than some heroines - things seem to happen around her. A lot of the action takes place in words - people discuss what events mean, what happens. Cassie also finds herself possessing other people's bodies now and again which is a very interesting aspect to the story but gets confusing again.
I presumed there would be a vampire love interest in the book as we have four or five eligible vampires paraded before us. However this doesn't work out quite as you might expect either, and in fact the sex scene towards the end of the book felt rather like something the editor had requested the author included rather than an integral part of the plot. It felt tacked on, somehow, and I think the book would have been just as good, or better, without.
Her vampire characters were good though. Of course many of them are people famous from the past (Raphael, Dracula's relatives, Rasputin and other well-known names) and they all have their own charms and scary sides. The vampires were particularly well described and were great characters - there's even a French double-barred vampire; no, not Jean-Claude, this one is Louis-C?sar. I liked it when Cassie interacted with the vampires because they were such complex characters and Cassie was aware of this and read the deeper meanings in a lot of what they said. That was well written.
I have some criticisms of this book, the main one being I wasn't really sure what was going on and, now I've finished it, I don't think I really understand it - and I don't consider myself dim. Maybe a re-read would help but I don't know if I enjoyed it enough for that. I felt that the world Karen Chance had built was perhaps a little overcomplex for the first book - maybe she should have added aspects over time rather like Laurell K Hamilton did (although she added way too much over time).
Although I enjoyed reading Touch The Dark I also read three or four other books over the time I was reading this one. In other words, it wasn't unputdownable at all. It's all set up for a sequel but I don't know whether I enjoyed this one enough to search out the next book in the series when it's published.