My computer died a glorious, blue-screened death earlier this week, so I apologize for the startling amount of typos you may encounter over the course of this review, because it’s being written on a device that probably should’ve been put out to pasture in 2010. This week’s book is Claimed by Shadow, the second entry in the Cassie Palmer urban fantasy series by Karen Chance. An earlier NovelTEA entry discusses the first book, Touch the Dark, if you want to check it out (seriously check that out because this review will contain spoilers for the first book).
Claimed by Shadow is more of the same fast-paced action that made its predecessor so much fun; weeks after Touch the Dark ends, Claimed by Shadow sees Cassie learning that:
- Her vampiric almost-lover, Mircea, placed a geis on her— basically, he has marked her as his, and anyone who dares to flirt with her will regret it, because the geis will go so far as to kick the ass of any suitor that isn’t Mircea.
- Awkwardly enough, Cassie’s brand-new power set requires that she lose her virginity; being that she’s distracted by a war going on, freeing her father’s ghost, and killing the vampire Mafioso that murdered her parents, she’s been a little too distracted to do the deed. But her powers wait for no man— err, woman— and suddenly, Cassie is salivating over every man she sees, even Pritkin, the war mage who would like nothing more than to toss her into an underground dungeon and leave her there to rot for the rest of her life.
Desperate to free her father’s ghost and take down her enemies (more desperately than she wants to get laid, anyway), Cassie and Pritkin journey to the magical realm of Faerie; a hostile place that will do neither Cassie nor Pritkin any favours as they struggle to fix the fault lines running through the magical community.
With Claimed by Shadow, I still had a good time and enjoyed myself— but I’d be lying if I didn’t say it took some willpower to push through. Over 130 pages of this book is dedicated to explaining Cassie’s new powers, aspects of the Silver Circle, and other such oddities about the world. I’m all for a good setup that involves world-building and detailed explanations of just how stuff works— but there was so much dialogue and back-and-forth, even in scenes that are supposed to be life-or-death . . . it was just a little more difficult to stay immersed in this second book. Nonetheless, I did enjoy the ride, and I plan to get around to the third one after taking a few weeks to recharge from this book’s massive info-dump.
For this week’s recipe, I picked the green goblin cocktail.
Thank you to Aubrey over at Real Housemoms for this delicious drink recipe!
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