Karen Chance – Curse the Dawn

The fourth book in the Cassie Palmer series, published April 2, 2009.
Genre: urban fantasy
Cover: I like this one, but my own bookcover is very pretty as well.



Cassie Palmer has the unenviable distinction of being the world’s chief clairvoyant. This, as she knows to her cost, is often more trouble than it’s worth.
After coming close to an agreement with the Silver Circle, a magical organization that’s been trying to kill her for years, Cassie gets kidnapped by one of its more embittered members. She escapes, and, to prevent this kind of thing from happening again, she invests in a magical device for protection: a statue that grants wishes.
What her clairvoyancey doesn’t tell her is that the statue has a warped sense of humour and grants wishes according to its own wicked whims. When she wishes to shift herself and companion Pritkin out of a sticky situation, the statue does something so bizarre and uncalled for that life for Cassie and Pritkin will never be the same again…


Another worthless blurb. So, don’t pay attention to it, even though I typed it over from the back of the book itself.

The book starts with a bang, as usual. Cassie needs training as the new Pythia, and she has decided to search for Agnes in the past. She just has to know more about her powers, and her duties, and with the Silver Circle still wanting her dead, she has no other resources. The vampires promise to protect her, but she doesn’t want to be beholden to them, work for them. She is sick and tired of being used.
But now they finally want to meet with her, to discuss things. At Dante’s, a neutral place. Pritkin is not happy with it, he doesn’t trust them to agree to the terms. And he was right. Much more mages show up than agreed to, and they soon overwhelm the vampires present. Then Cassie is captured in a null net by the lead mage, who really hates her as she was the reason his son Nick was killed. Determined to take her back to MAGIC to stand trial, he takes her off through the ley lines. With Pritkin in hot pursuit, but he is not the only one. Soon all the mage fire in the ley lines makes it go haywire, and that what never should have happened, does. The ley line explodes, and MAGIC with it. Now they have a common goal, they have to find out if anyone survives, and get them out. Cassie’s shifting powers are the most important for that, the top layers of the buildings are no more. But getting inside is not the problem, staying alive is. The defences of the building are still working, but can no longer discern friend from foe, and attack everything that moves.
The vampires are safe, which was Cassie’s major concern, especially her friend Rafe, who was kind of a father to her. But the mages prisons are overcrowded, and Cassie want to safe them all, not just the one prisoner the Consul wants her to free. With the help of vampires and mages alike, they manage, just in time. The place is coming down on them, and the only way to escape is in the Consul’s antique car collection in the garages beneath.

But after that, the hunt for Cassie is still on. She needs weapons, and she decides to take her new bodyguard, Mircea sicked on her, with her, as well as Francoise. Francoise will know which weapons actually do have magic and work, and which are fakes. Cassie will need all the help she can get. But then the mages kidnap the children she was taking care of, and she needs to safe them, at risk of herself. Of course it is a trap, and when she uses the magical statue of the Japanese god, things go not as she wanted them to. And Pritkin is livid. But her shifting also doesn’t work, as they end up in England, with the former Master of the Silver Circle, and someone Pritkin considers a friend. But he has plans of his own, and Cassie is not sure she wants to be a part of that. But does she have a choice this time?


Almost non-stop action, danger and stress, and I gobbled it all up. I enjoyed this book very much, Cassie keeps trying to do the best she can, against all the odds and all her enemies. She doesn’t have a chance to get her father out of Tony’s hands, no time to try to go back to Faery. She needs to get the mages of her back, to make them see reason. They want to kill her, so the Pythia’s power will seek a new host, one they can control as they have for thousands of years. A Pythia under the vampires influence is the worst thing they can imagine.

I absolutely laughed out loud at the last paragraph in the book, when Pritkin has discovered what Cassie has done to his body … That was really fun. I am looking forward to reading the fifth book, which arrived last week. And thanks to Karen Chance, I have the bookmark that goes with it .

9 stars.

© 2012 Reviews by Aurian