Touch the Dark - Karen Chance

Series: Cassandra Palmer, Book 1
Genre: Paranormal
307 pages
Published: 2006
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Blurb: Cassandra Palmer can see the future and communicate with spirits;talents that make her attractive to the dead and the undead. The ghosts of the dead aren't usually dangerous; they just like to talk; a lot. The undead are another matter.

Like any sensible girl, Cassie tries to avoid vampires. But when the bloodsucking Mafioso she escaped three years ago finds Cassie again with vengeance on his mind, she's forced to turn to the vampire Senate for protection. The undead senators won't help her for nothing, and Cassie finds herself working with one of their most powerful members, a dangerously seductive master vampire—and the price he demands may be more than Cassie is willing to pay.
 
Review:  Touch the dark suffers from what can only be described as First Book Syndrome - there's so much of world building and explanations of the past put in here that it really bogs you down and leaves you wondering whether you want to go on. But once you get past, say, the first 50 odd pages, you will get sucked right into the story.

Cassandra Palmer is a clairvoyant on the run from the vampire who raised her. Her life takes a turn when she receives an email with her obituary with the exact time of her death. Trying to escape her fate, Cassie instead ends up at the Vampire Senate and suddenly learns a whole lotta things about herself - she may make chief clairvoyant, there's more about her parents she didn’t know, her old Vampire boss is now keeping dangerous company, there's a war beginning, her childhood crush vampire is out to seduce her, oh and she keeps getting transported to the past.

This is a pretty neat story with a lot of action to keep you engrossed..whats keeping it from being great is that in many places it lacks better execution and narration. The story is told from Cassie's point of view, and sometimes she's just to ditzy to be appealing as a speaker. I liked the other characters a lot though- they're all fascinating. The world Chance has build is pretty interesting - the vampire order is based on their degree of power, there's good and dark fae & mages, and the older vamps are all figures you might recognise from history. Mircea, the sexy vamp senate member who I'm drooling over is the Dracula's brother. The others I'll let you read about - Kit, Louis-Cesar & Ralf. I also liked Tomas and Billy the Ghost. And then there's Pritkin, the mage who is quite a pain in the arse. Not giving much info on them here, but you'll love them when you read about them.

I thought all these characters had their personalities sketched a lot more than Cassie herself. But again, I think that’s because its her doing the narration and she's describing things to the reader - the parts where she does talk about herself don’t reveal much about her as a person enough. This is still a good book. I must admit though that I'm saying that mostly cause I've read book 2, Claimed By Shadow , which is a BIG step up from this one and this really is a very interesting series that you will love and get engrossed in. Just those first 60 pages to slog through in the beginning.. Its all good from there.