Review Of Karen Chance’s Ride the Storm
I have long been a fan of Karen Chance’s body of work. I am a loyal fan and have remained undaunted in the face of all the machinations of the publisher and publishing machine. Karen Chance has long kept the faith with her readers. She often offers free stories that add to her published works to create a more complex, multifaceted and fulfilling world in which all her novels take place. Readers who only read the novels from the publishing house lose a lot of the details and the joy of seeing the characters in multiple lights. All that being said, Karen Chance’s Cassandra Palmer novel Ride the Storm has been one of the most anticipated novels in my memory. This is not the fault of Karen Chance and that cannot be said firmly enough. The publishing house has been moving dates on this novel for over a year with little to no explanation.
The previous book, Reap the Wind was judged too long by the publisher when submitted by the author. This led to a quick rewrite and the split of the book almost in half. This also left an unfulfilled feeling at the end of Reap the Wind. Many plotlines were left hanging, which left some readers unhappy and the continuous manipulation by the publishers with moving dates and little communication lost even more of the fan base. Ride the Storm is the second half of the previous book with a little bit of newer information which furthers the plot of the Cassandra Palmer novels.
I was recently asked by a friend to explain the Cassie Palmer novels and I drew a bit of a blank—how do you explain such a complicated and multifaceted storyline as the one Karen Chance has created? I told her she just needs to read it and we will talk about it once she has. To say that all of the Cassie Palmer novels are fast paced is kind of like saying a quadruple shot espresso is a little bit energizing. These books move along at a frenetic pace and always have plot twists that are unexpected to say the least. It is impossible to have predicted where the main characters end up at the beginning of this book, let alone at the end of the book.
So much happens in this book to move the plot along that after reading it 3 times, I am still finding new details to enjoy. This is not a book to start when you have a deadline coming up or really anything planned. Depending on your reading speed and availability, you should plan to be unavailable until you can finish the book. This is not one you are going to want to put down as there are no really good stopping places. My recommendation is to start it on a Friday so you can have the weekend to take a break from reality and a trip into the Cassandra Palmer universe.
This book brings resolution to a lot of the ongoing plot lines that readers have been gnashing their teeth to know. We find out why MIrcea is so interested in Pythias. We get to see Pritkin rescued. We get to see Cassie find her feet and establish her own space independent of all the forces tearing at her. We learn more about Cassie’s parents. Dorina and Cassie finally meet. We go careening through the story and learn so much along the way that it’s hard to even begin to summarize it so I am not going to even try. Despite this, there is a seeming resolution to the love triangle between Cassie, Mircea and Pritkin but it is open ended enough that I see it more as an affirmation of the fact that Cassie has complicated emotions and feelings for both men.
This book is a solid addition to the Cassandra Palmer world and yet leaves a lot of storylines open for more exploration. It is my sincere hope that Karen Chance continues to publish Cassandra Palmer books for a very long time. In order for that to happen, fans have to not only buy this book, but review it. Talk about it with friends and build it up so that the publishers contract with Karen Chance for more Cassie Palmer books.
I look forward to discussing all of this with fellow fans at my site bestbooklover.net and at the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/BestBooklovernet-336745780072074/
In the interest of full disclosure, I received an ARC ebook in return for this review.
Ride the Storm
Cassandra Palmer
Paranormal
Berkeley
August 1, 2017
606
The New York Times bestselling author of Reap the Wind returns to the “fascinating world”* of Cassie Palmer. Ever since being stuck with the job of pythia, the chief seer of the supernatural world, Cassie Palmer has been playing catch up. Catch up to the lifetime's worth of training she missed being raised by a psychotic vampire instead of at the fabled pythian court. Catch up to the powerful, and sometimes seductive, forces trying to mold her to their will. It's been a trial by fire that has left her more than a little burned. But now she realizes that all that was the just the warm up for the real race. Ancient forces that once terrorized the world are trying to return, and Cassie is the only one who can stop them...
Touch The Dark Reread Part 1
Cassandra Palmer has had a rough life. She is in her mid-twenties and on the run from Vampires. When she returns from her dinner break at the travel agency, someone has changed the wallpaper on her computer to her obituary in the next days paper. She is going to be killed in a little over an hour. Before she runs, she has to let her roommate know why she’s leaving. Cassie is a clairvoyant and talks to ghosts. On her way to the club where she sometimes tells futures, she runs into one of the resident ghosts of Atlanta, Portia. Portia is a southern belle who died before she made it to her wedding. Cassie asks Portia if she has seen Billy Joe. Billy Joe is a bad gambler from the 1800′s who got caught cheating and was killed, but luckily he had won a truly horrific gemstone necklace from a countess the week before and the gem stored residual energy. The gem was enough to keep Billy Joe around and when Cassie came across the necklace at 17, she started giving him life energy so he could help her. Portia hasn’t seen Billy Joe, but says she and her friends will enjoy playing lookout.
Cassie was raised by Tony, a 3rd level master vampire, who ran the Philly mob. He used her visions to make money, and had killed her parents when she was 4 because they objected to Tony raising her. Cassie took off at 14 and did pretty well as a street kid but came back to get Tony taken down by the FBI for his illegal dealings with no mention of vampires. Then she went into Witness Protection for a while, until she saw the death of her handler and couldn’t convince the marshal service to take her seriously.
Cassie’s roommate is Tomas, a gorgeous young man who she met through the street kid program where she volunteers. He has been living with her for 6 months and has made some sexual advances, which horrified Cassie as she was just trying to be nice. She gets to the club and tries to tell Tomas she has to run. He says he is coming with her and says he has to tell her something, and they duck into a storeroom. 5 master level vamps come in after them. Somehow, Cassie and Tomas make it through the fight. Tomas ripped out two of the vamps hearts out. He uses the metal shelving unit to impale another one. Cassies ward takes care of one and a group of Ghosts explodes the other.
Cassie has a vision of Thomas when he first becomes a vampire, causing her to panic. Here she thought she was doing something good, and he turns out to be a master level vampire. She has seen him in sunlight. In order to keep her from leaving, Tomas dances with her and lightly kisses her neck and then her. He is clearly being affected by his proximity, and he begins to kiss her for real. He lifts her to his waist with the suggestion that she not fight him. And he starts back for the storeroom. His power surrounds her and he manages to have a pretty steamy sex scene with her and then he gets her to give him the gun. He has her go to sleep.
When she wakes up she is in a waiting room. The Oracle (newspaper for the paranormal) is several months old and has the headline of “Pythia’s heir missing: time out of whack”. Raphael (yes that Raphael) tells Cassie that Tomas was assigned as her bodyguard by the senate. And the betrayal is bothering Cassie.
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[Top]Day Zero is only a little over a month away! #Repost @bookbreathingdragon
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Hi 😃 This is one of my absolute favourite YA series, it is The Arcana Chronicles by @kresleycole! (Although this photo is incomplete as my copy of Poison Princess is currently being enjoyed at my friend’s house – she is loving it!) I just CAN NOT WAIT until Day Zero and Arcana Rising installments in August!! .
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