Touch the Dark by Karen Chance

Touch the Dark is the first in Karen Chance’s Cassandra Palmer urban fantasy series. Cassie is a seer; she can foretell the future and speak with ghosts. Later, she learns she has another power too: the ability to travel back in time and change events in the past. The time-travel element is unusual in urban fantasy and lends some freshness to what would otherwise be a pretty standard plot about a young woman embroiled in the politics of gorgeous, Machiavellian vampires. It’s a promising blend of story elements — but it’s tripped up by the execution.

The biggest problem is the infodumping. The narrative screeches to a halt in the most unlikely places so that Chance can explain the history and magical rules of her world. For example, during a combat scene early in the book, a ward is activated, and the fight is int... Read More

Midnight's Daughter by Karen Chance

Meet Dorina; she comes from perhaps the most dysfunctional family in existence. She's the niece of Dracula, the bastard daughter of Drac's older brother Mircea. Dracula, Mircea, and their third brother, Radu, are all vampires, and centuries of bad blood lie between Drac and the other two men. Dorina's own place in the clan is shaky. She is a dhampir, the offspring of a vampire and a human, a creature subject to berserk rages and ostracized from both human and vampire society. Most dhampirs die early, violent deaths. Dorina has lasted five hundred years, and she has no desire to end her winning streak now.

As Midnight's Daughter begins, Dorina's roommate Claire is missing. Claire is a magical null, a descendant of one of the most venerable witch families in existence, and the only person who's ever been able to keep Dory calm for any length of time. Rumor has it she's been kidnapped by vampires a... Read More

Death’s Mistress by Karen Chance

I adored Death’s Mistress by Karen Chance. For character, action, mystery, suspense and setting, I place this novel on a par with Jim Butcher’s The Dresden Files or Kim Harrison’s Rachel Morgan series — two of my personal favorites — and for humor, I rate it even higher. Death’s Mistress is insanely funny in just the right spots. It is as entertaining a novel as I have read in many years.

In this second book of the Dorina Basarab series, Dorina, a half-human, half-vampire Dhampir, is asked to conduct the seemingly simple task of picking up a low-level Master Vampire, Ray, for interrogation. She immediately decapitates Ray so that she can bring in his still living head, u... Read More

Strange Brew by P.N. Elrod (ed)

The theme of Strange Brew is witchcraft. This anthology features nine well-known urban fantasy authors, each with their own spin on the theme. Some of these stories feature well-known characters. Others focus on characters who are secondary in the author's series, or characters who are entirely new. Glancing at the table of contents and doing a little mental math, most of the stories are around 40 pages, give or take a few. (The longest is Karen Chance's at just under 60.) As is always the case with anthologies, I had my favorites and my less-favorites, but if you like urban fantasy, there will probably be something here for you.

"Seeing Eye" by Patricia Briggs: A werewolf enlists the help of a blind witch to help him find his brother who has been kidnapped by a sinister coven. The wit... Read More

We have with us today, Karen Chance, author of two extremely enjoyable fantasy series that I count among my personal favorites.: the Cassandra Palmer and Dorina Basarab series. Karen has graciously agreed to stop by throughout the day to answer fan questions, and we're giving away two more copies of Midnight's Daughter the prequel to today's newly released Death's Mistress, so please make sure to comment or ask questions.

On her website,  www.karenchance.com,  you can read some of her short stories and learn all sorts of gossipy things about Karen, including her penchant for giving advice about relationships with vampires. Loyal readers may recall that just before Christmas, I posed some open questions to Karen on behalf of a, um, friend who suspects that my, err,  that is, his wife ... Read More