Claimed by Shadow (Cassandra Palmer Series) - Paranormal Romance Novel for Adults - Perfect for Fantasy Book Lovers & Urban Fiction Readers

I came to the party late. Somehow, I stumbled across the fourth Cassie Palmer book (Curse the Dawn), read the fifth book (Hunt the Moon), then went back to the third (Embrace the Night), the first (Touch the Dark), and ended up now with the second book (Claimed by Shadow). The good editors of the series must have insisted that Karen Chance provided the background explanations for all the characters in every book. I was able to enter this fantasy world backward and still make sense of the story. Cassie Palmer is an amazing girl and the stories made me wonder about the author and the extent to which this fantasy series is somehow autobiographical. Some writers, such as Diane Sylvan, Ilona Andrews, and Diana Pharaoh are traditional storytellers who do not use the first person voice as much and you don't get the sense that they are the heroine. In Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer series, it is hard to escape the perception that the enthusiasm and the personality of Cassie Palmer must be that of the story-teller. Cassie is a clairvoyant orphan raised by a second rate vampire mafioso, and ran away from him at age 14, only to be discovered by her childhood crush Mircea (who also becomes her lover and happens to be brother of Count Dracula), Pritkin (a war mage who also happened to have been Merlin), Casanova (a third rate vampire-incubus who runs the Las Vegas casino that Cassie uses as a home base), and a number of other sexy males. Cassie is the hapless heir to the power of Pythia, a seer who not only advises both vampires and mages. She can transport herself and others in time and space, an interesting literary device. Cassie cannot receive the full power of the Pythia position until she loses her virginity. Along the way, she discovers that she has been magically spelled to be in love with Mircea the vampire. The lingering question after the first book was who of the cast of sexy males gets to deflower the maiden. That question is answered in the second book. The third book answers who her parents were, at least her mother. The fourth book deals with the geis (a spell that compels love) that she had received at age 11 or 12 to love Mircea and he her, but that she has been trying to eliminate so that her love could be true passion rather than compelled. Karen Chance is one of the most creative authors that I have ever read, on par with JK Rowling in the completeness and logic of her fantasy world. Not only is her vision remarkably detailed but it is simply different in a compellingly logical way. I can imagine her eyes rolling heavenward as she huffs pedantically that vampires don't mind holy water (just dirty and old fluid collected from churches) or garlic (yes, they eat it with their pasta). No, they don't have to drink blood from veins (although they do so when they want to make love or punish their victims). Yes, they get burned in sunlight but you develop resistance after centuries. Mages are sexy (in fact, the only males who are not sexy in the stories are those who are evil). She definitely likes long-haired men. Cassie describes herself as a diminutive blond and not particularly well-endowed but still sufficiently shaped to arouse every male who comes within 10 feet. Along the way, she befriends some females, particularly witches and hags but not femme fatales. Somehow, she seems threatened by Asian women. Every book was entertaining and surprising. Reading her books is like going on a series of dates with a wild and creative girl who enjoys freedom, action, sex, and breakfast in that order of preference.