Review: Touch the Dark

Touch the Dark by Karen Chance
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

“I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw the obituary.”

When a book starts off like that, you tend to expect greatness. You might not get it, but you expect it. This was close to greatness, but never quite made it.

Don't get me wrong, there are things here that I loved. The historical figures as supernatural entities, the witches, the hierarchy of vampires, the time-traveling, Cassie's powers, hell, even the gore at times. Vampires are violent creatures.

But even with all of that going for it, this book had two glaring problems for me:

1) The info-dumps. Sweet Jesus, the info-dumps. Look, I read sci-fi so I know that information must be given. But if the character is in the middle of dying, it's probably not the best time for one. And that happened a lot. A. LOT. The story is told in first-person pov, so wherever the character's mind goes, the reader goes. Do you know how jarring it is for the character to be taking her last breath and then start rambling about the color of the moon? Pretty damn jarring. (That didn't actually happen, but I'm not far off. It wasn't the moon she was talking about)

2) My second point of sheer and utter annoyance contention was the narrator herself. After the powerhouse that is Gillian Urswick, Cassandra “I don't know when to shut the hell up” 'Cassie' Palmer was a huge letdown. She's 23, and usually that means I would give a character that young some slack. Young and foolish goes hand-in-hand. …..but not if you grew up in a gangster vampire's court. There's no way in hell you learned all of these survival techniques without learning how to shut the hell up when in the presence of one of the most powerful vampires on the planet.

So, yeah. This was a long, strange trip. I think that I might take a break now that I'm 3 books into this 28 (so far) book universe because my brain is mush. A lot of stuff happened here, y'all. Too much happened here. whew

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