Curse The Dawn

By Karen Chance

Curse The Dawn by Karen ChanceHaving been raised by vampires since her parents death when she was young, Cassie has become the most powerful ‘seer’ or clairvoyant in the supernatural world and she also has the power to travel back and forth through history. Cassie has been chosen to be ‘Pythea’, the world’s protector against anyone attempting to change time, and thus charged with using her powers to keep our timeline safe from change. The vampire council support her in this but they ally her with the vampire Mircea, who has claimed her as his own, and despite her best intentions the two become lovers.

In this book the God, Apollo, source of the Pythea’s power, is tracking Cassie down and trying to kill her. Cassie enlists the help of a magical statue that has the power to grant wishes for protection, but the statue has a warped sense of humour and during a firefight with some evil wizards at the beginning of the story, when Cassie wishes for her and her companion, Pritkin, to be whisked away from the danger the statue switches them into each others bodies and that’s when the complications really begin.

Curse the Dawn is the fourth book in Karen Chance ‘Cassie Palmer’ series. Cassie is an immensely likeable heroine in that she has been thrown into a life that she was not expecting and, having never been trained to use her gifts properly, her powers are intermittent most of the time and just plain clumsy at others so she has a tendency to ‘bumble through’ more by luck than judgement most of the time. This makes her something of an everywomen character, she’s petite with dumb-blonde looks but she’s independent-minded, strong-willed and savvy and takes all of the extraordinary adventures in her stride.

For fans of urban fantasy these books make for a welcome change of pace. Unlike a lot of their poe-faced, psuedo-literary contemporaries they don’t take themselves too seriously, simultaneously providing action, adventure and romance while poking fun at the genre with terrific good humour. True, the plot and dialogue are a little wayward at times and there are inconsistencies if you dig deep but the characters are well-rounded and engaging and Ms Chance doesn’t appear afraid to take chances with them, throwing them into outlandish and sometimes bizarre situations, but you care what happens to them and, for me, that’s where her strength truly lies.

While you can read this as a standalone novel, my guess is that it would make better sense to have read them in order so that you get to grips with the world, the relationships and the events leading to this book. But don’t let that put you off, it’s a lot of fun as it is so if you’re after a fast-paced, exciting read, or a beach-book to pass a few hours then you really can’t go wrong.

Curse The Dawn is published by Penguin and is available from Play.com, Blackwell and all good book stores.

Karen Chance has a website.