Touch the Dark: Try Chance’s later series instead

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 interrupted in favor of a lecture about wards. Another example: later in the book, Cassie and her love interest discuss big chunks of backstory during a sex scene… and somehow, this doesn’t seem to break the mood at all, even though one of the topics is the murder of Cassie’s parents.

It’s also irksome that so many historical figures are cast as vampires. It seems like everyone who was ever famous was actually a vampire, and the use of so many famous people feels like a shortcut around actual character development.

Touch the Dark is also confusing at times, and the prose style is too reminiscent of Laurell K. Hamilton’s. Try Chance’s more recent Dorina Basarab, Dhampir books instead.