How to sum up the thirteenth book in a series that has no end in sight? Okay, let me try:
Cassandra Palmer, former ward of a vampire mobster, now Pythia, top seer in the world, Oracle of Delphi, is in the battle for her life. The daughter of a human mage and Artemis, aka Hel (because apparently all gods do double or triple duty with all world religions), Cassie has to stop Zeus/Odin and the other gods from breaking into our world and destroying everyone. Helped by Mircea Basarab (brother of Vlad Tepes), John Pritkin (aka Emrys, aka Merlin; half fey/human son of the lord of the Incubi demons), and a whole cast of characters. This book picks up Pritkin trying to win a tournament for his grandmother Nimue’s throne (because we have to drag in King Arthur characters even more apparently), so as to have a large enough army to win his side a fighting chance in the battle. Can Cassie help him all while trying to avoid getting herself or any of their ragtag band of allies killed?
I am thirteen books into this series (never mind its two offshoot series, the three e-books, and the two standalone books of short stories) and I still don’t know what I think of it. It has a who’s who of famous people as vampires that I just don’t get: Mircea and Radu Basarab, Kit Marlowe, Raphael (guess that explains his death at 37), Rasputin (really?) Jack the Ripper, Louis-Cesare de Bourbon (the Man in the Iron Mask); heck, the Head of the Vampire Consul is Cleopatra, who is some strange snake/vampire hybrid. The series-wide plot is insane, in a kind of “at this point we’re totally off the rails, off the map, and just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and hopefully something will stick” way. I don’t know if I like the series; I start a book questioning why I’m doing this to myself, why can’t I just give the series up, even if I’ve invested this much time and energy in it. Then I get further into the book and…I don’t hate it. I don’t love it, I can’t say it’s a page-turner, but I’m mildly entertained and curious where she’s going with it all. And then I get to the end and I suppose I’ll get the next one. And the cycle starts all over again.
Cassie, who started out the series as one of the most vacuous, annoying, and emotionally and physically weak characters, has become one of, if not the, strongest. Mircea and Pritkin, who I thought would have to carry her the entire time (and boy, would that get old), have become two of the biggest emotional drains and babies Cassie has to tend to. Which you would find surprising seeing as they are both several hundred years old and she’s maybe twenty-one if she’s a day, but Mircea has a “I want it, I go for it, oh look, there’s something I need. Let me not tell anyone what I’m doing, let me just do it” mentality, and Pritkin is only going to deal with profanity and fatalistic existential angst until they invent something more nihilistic. They’re draining to read, never mind actually interacting with them.
There are a lot of unfinished questions at the end of the book, mostly because apparently the characters don’t care to ask them. And I will say that I’ve read the series and I had no idea what was happening and who they were talking about half the time. Characters have wandered in and out of this series so many times that I probably should have started a spreadsheet to keep track of who’s allied to who, where they are, if they’re alive or dead, what their names even are; the pieces are many and they are just flung all over the board here.
The writing is not the greatest; it’s a little simplistic, and I can see why and how Karen Chance has gone from being published by a reasonably well-known company to now having to self-publish, when she can get the company to accept she’ll sell enough to warrant that. I am thankful that the sex scenes (yes, there is at least one per book; oh joy, oh rapture) have gotten a little less bodice-ripper-y and more tolerable. Earlier in the series, Chance wrote like she was going for Laurell K. Hamilton and Anita Blake, and that was one series I did quit unfinished (it was the wine-colored velvet underwear that broke me; I just couldn’t even.) So if you don’t like sex, violence, profanity, or plots that boil down to “the villain of the week is over! let’s whomp an even bigger one at our heroes, and keep going like that until the reader wonders how this series is ever going to realistically end”, avoid this series. If you don’t mind any of that and want a series that isn’t going to tax your brain (I call series like this cotton candy; empty calories, but reasonably harmless), pick this one up.