In Review: Touch the Dark by Karen Chance
Released: June 2006 307 pages
Publisher: Roc Books
Format: Paperback
Karen Chance’s Cassandra Palmer is equal parts naïve kewpie, and jinx. Wherever she goes trouble follows. She’s a human clairvoyant who can talk to ghost raised in a vampire court, who’s been on the run from said vampires for the past three years. As the story opens the vampires have found her, and the semi normal life that she’s built for herself has to be left behind if she’s going to survive.
She’s forced into the arms of the Vampire Senate, and as he powers begin to go awry she’s thrust into a world on the brink of war with the ailing Pythia, a powerful seer and time guardian, and her missing heir. People are not who they seem, and the only one she can truly trust is a power leeching ghost. The vampires all want something from her, and their determined to get it one way or another.
This one is one hell of a rollercoaster ride from beginning to end. Cassandra is a very likable heroine who isn’t abrasive like many others in the genre. She’s damaged goods just like the rest, but she doesn’t seem to take her life’s hiccups out on the world, in fact she’d be more than happy to just survive. The usage of historical figures is well played, using the history for plausible twists in a world ensconced in magic. The plotting is very tight, and the writing and prose is wonderful.
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