Embrace the Night (Cassandra Palmer, 3) by Karen Chance
I have to say, Cassie Palmer really DID embrace the night in this latest book by Karen Chance. She does a lot of interesting things in this book that she would not have been willing or capable of doing in the first two books.
The book starts off a couple weeks after the last book ends but the action starts immediately with no review of what has happened in previous books. This can make the series a little difficult to read if you are not reading them one after the other or if you pick up the wrong one first.
Cassie is still trying to fit into her role as the new Pythia, the seer for the entire magical community, but she seems to have much better luck finally adapting to the position in this novel. At several points near the end she uses her position to justify her actions to some characters that would have been on her do-not-cross list in the previous books and they step aside for her. It's gratifying to see her make some progress in that arena.
Since the storyline does deal so heavily with finding the Codex Merlini in both time and space the action can get a little garbled but the plot is not so complex that you get lost, just complex enough for you to really think about aspects of it. Cassie is seeking out the Codex in order to reverse the geis that was placed on her (once) and Mircea (twice) to bind them together. Since this threatens Cassie's independence she's willing to go through quite a few hoops to get it removed. An emergency 'out' was built into the geis (sex with the originator - in this case Mircea - or with one of his chosen stand-ins) but Cassie tried that in the last book with Tomas and it didn't exactly work.
Along for the ride is Pritkin who, as a war mage, is sworn to protect the Pythia. Pritkin is the source of most of the confusing aspects of this book as several interesting factoids about his past come to light. First off, Pritkin is half incubus and his father, King of the Demons, would really like to kill the Pythia and nearly seduces Cassie twice to get the job done. The thing is that he looks almost exactly like Pritkin but more stylish so Cassie confuses them at first.
The other major thing is Pritkin IS Merlin and wrote the Codex way back in the day. This leads to a long series of time-jumping, confusion about a map to the Codex which interestingly enough somehow involves stripping, a lot of distrust and some almost paradoxical episodes. Pritkin has tried to remove the geis from Cassie and Mircea but since it got doubled on one end the spell warped and the standard removal spell just won't cut it.
Cassie finally figures out how to remove the geis but it involves having sex with a Mircea from two time periods. Some parts of that were quite confusing (is it a threesome if there are three bodies and only two lives?) and the rest was interesting and dramatic enough to make up for the confusing bits. Cassie still has several problems on the horizon but there's quite a bit more light at the end of this book than at the others. At least the geis is gone and Cassie is finally starting to assert some sway over others so she's not constantly running but standing up to protect as well.
This was my favorite of the books so far and I can't wait until the fourth book comes out.
I have to say, Cassie Palmer really DID embrace the night in this latest book by Karen Chance. She does a lot of interesting things in this book that she would not have been willing or capable of doing in the first two books.
The book starts off a couple weeks after the last book ends but the action starts immediately with no review of what has happened in previous books. This can make the series a little difficult to read if you are not reading them one after the other or if you pick up the wrong one first.
Cassie is still trying to fit into her role as the new Pythia, the seer for the entire magical community, but she seems to have much better luck finally adapting to the position in this novel. At several points near the end she uses her position to justify her actions to some characters that would have been on her do-not-cross list in the previous books and they step aside for her. It's gratifying to see her make some progress in that arena.
Since the storyline does deal so heavily with finding the Codex Merlini in both time and space the action can get a little garbled but the plot is not so complex that you get lost, just complex enough for you to really think about aspects of it. Cassie is seeking out the Codex in order to reverse the geis that was placed on her (once) and Mircea (twice) to bind them together. Since this threatens Cassie's independence she's willing to go through quite a few hoops to get it removed. An emergency 'out' was built into the geis (sex with the originator - in this case Mircea - or with one of his chosen stand-ins) but Cassie tried that in the last book with Tomas and it didn't exactly work.
Along for the ride is Pritkin who, as a war mage, is sworn to protect the Pythia. Pritkin is the source of most of the confusing aspects of this book as several interesting factoids about his past come to light. First off, Pritkin is half incubus and his father, King of the Demons, would really like to kill the Pythia and nearly seduces Cassie twice to get the job done. The thing is that he looks almost exactly like Pritkin but more stylish so Cassie confuses them at first.
The other major thing is Pritkin IS Merlin and wrote the Codex way back in the day. This leads to a long series of time-jumping, confusion about a map to the Codex which interestingly enough somehow involves stripping, a lot of distrust and some almost paradoxical episodes. Pritkin has tried to remove the geis from Cassie and Mircea but since it got doubled on one end the spell warped and the standard removal spell just won't cut it.
Cassie finally figures out how to remove the geis but it involves having sex with a Mircea from two time periods. Some parts of that were quite confusing (is it a threesome if there are three bodies and only two lives?) and the rest was interesting and dramatic enough to make up for the confusing bits. Cassie still has several problems on the horizon but there's quite a bit more light at the end of this book than at the others. At least the geis is gone and Cassie is finally starting to assert some sway over others so she's not constantly running but standing up to protect as well.
This was my favorite of the books so far and I can't wait until the fourth book comes out.
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