NovelTEA: Touch the Dark + Ghost Rice Krispie Pops

With the exact tone and emphasis of Chandler Bing, could I be any more basic? Yes, friends, it’s finally October, which means sweater weather is actually a thing, the sun has stopped trying to turn my hair into a giant, static-shocked frizz ball, and I have pulled down all the “spooky” books on my shelves to whip myself up a TBR. There aren’t any horror novels on the agenda this year (sorry), but my best friend somehow convinced me that starting The Vampire Diaries TV show now, at the ripe old age of “too-old-for-the-CW’s-bullshit-especially-the-stuff-pre-2012” was a good idea. I lasted four seasons and 12 episodes before slapping myself across the face and reclaiming my sanity. I may still be watching The Originals, but that’s neither here nor there.

All that is to say that my unfortunate time hunkering down in Mystic Falls has caused quite an itch for some good old-fashioned urban fantasy. Only: I’m way out-of-my-depth when it comes to the genre. I’ve only ever read Kelley Armstrong’s Otherworld series, and I kind of abandoned that series about four books in. I would’ve picked one of those up, but I wanted to start fresh; like so many green-thumbs before me, I turned to Goodreads for recommendations.

The first one on the recommended list was a book called Touch the Dark by Karen Chance, the first in a series that revolves around a woman in her early 20s, Seer, Cassie Palmer, and later intertwines with a subsequent series that I have no freaking clue about.

Anyway. Touch the Dark was written in 2006, so I was armed and ready to face all the things that seemed to be a byproduct of that era: a cast as white as a loaf of Wonder Bread, smut that’s so bad it burns my eyeballs, and a heroine that’s a little bit of a damsel archetype, whether she means to be or not, while her love interest broods on and on about how he needs to protect her, or whatever.

Actually, I was wrong. I mean, diversity wasn’t as big of a topic back then and Touch the Dark will win no prizes in 2018, but for 2006, it was a hell of a lot different than what I was expecting. The only reason it wasn’t more diverse is Chance’s use of actual historical figures as her characters, rearranging them on a fantastical chessboard that sees Cleopatra as a leader of the North American Vampire Senate, Mircea II of Wallachia as one of our swoon-worthy love interests, Jack the Ripper as an undead torture-monger, and one very big, bad, recognizable villain that I won’t outright name just in case I’m not the last one to hop on this series’ bandwagon. The smut was kind of awkward (I can’t choose which scene I cringed through hardest. The part where our female heroine temporarily inhabited a man, or a scene involving an awkward game of “More-than-20 Questions” between her and a vampire that’s trying his damndest to devirginitize her for a reason that’s actually relevant to the plot, which is weird but also hilarious, in retrospect).

Scenes of all sorts were regularly interjected by info-dumps about magical creatures, rules, and communities that were interesting, but so not relevant when you’re either in the middle of a fight to the death or about to get dicked down by a vampire, ya know?

All of this and I still haven’t really told you what it’s about.

We follow Cassie Palmer, a heroine who is actually tough and smart, and honest about her flaws (at least she has them, and there are many. I appreciate that). As a child, Cassie’s parents were murdered, and she was abducted by a vampire Mafioso who intended to use her psychic gifts as a Seer— she can see the future and commune with ghosts— she escaped him as a teenager, but has been running ever since. When her past finally catches up with her, Cassie is forced to turn to the vampire Senate— their highest authority— for help. But it’s a mutually beneficial arrangement: they will protect Cassie in exchange for terms untold, she only knows she and her powers will be used in some way. She finds herself aligned with the vampire she’s been crushing on since she was 11 (I know, I cringed a little, too), a powerful Senate member who sees no problem with murder as a problem’s solution and still has that way about him that charmed her as a girl. I guess it’s kind of sweet? Listen, on a list of Worst Undead Boyfriends, Mircea doesn’t even crack the Top 10 Most Wildly Creepy, and he’s a lot less in-your-face than some other supernatural beaus, like Clay Danvers. And I guess, technically, because Mircea didn’t even look at her as anything more than a child until she was an adult, it’s not as creepy? Wait. No. This hurts my brain. #JustVampireThings.

Honestly, you guys, it sounds like I didn’t enjoy myself, but I actually really did. Despite its flaws, Touch the Dark is the equivalent of a box of Halloween candy— will it nourish you in any positive way? Probably not, unless you’re a cavity, but you’ll eat one Hershey’s bar, and before you know it, the entire box is empty.

There was a lot to process in this book; not just vampires and Seers, but werecreatures (wolves and rats), witches, ghosts, Dark Fae, Light Fae, satyrs, mages, and probably some other ones I can’t remember. Time-travel is also introduced at some point, and also possession. It’s just… it’s a lot.

But it’s so much fun. Chance’s writing style is easy to dive into, the plot moves fast, and Cassie is a pretty decent main character. Everything (mostly) ties together well enough at the end that I want to know more. I’ll definitely be continuing on with this series (I swear this time. It’s not like the Wild Seasons series, which found its way into my donation box last week, finally. Guess I won’t be reading the second book after all).

The recipe for this week, ghost Rice Krispie pops, was a little inspired by the fact that Cassie can talk to ghosts, but also because I’ve just really been wanting Rice Krispie squares.

Thanks to Kerry over at KerryCooks for this delightfully sweet treat!

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