Karen Chance – Tempt the Stars

The sixth book in the Cassie Palmer series, published October 1, 2013.
Genre: urban fantasy
Cover: nice



Being a goddess is a lot less fun than you might think. Especially when you're only a half goddess, and you only found out about it recently, and you still don't know what you're doing half the time. And when you've just used your not-so-reliable powers to burglarize the booby-trapped office of a vampire mob boss.
Yeah, that part sucks.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg for Cassandra Palmer, aka the Pythia, the freshly minted chief seer of the supernatural world. After all, Cassie still has to save a friend from a fate worse than death, deal with an increasingly possessive master vampire, and prevent a party of her own acolytes from unleashing a storm of fury upon the world. Totally just your average day at the office, right?


I have no idea how to write a coherent review about this book. It is so incredibly action filled, Cassie has no time to catch her breath, eat or sleep before the next disaster is happening. Pritkin saved her life in the previous book, and as a result of that, his demon father took him back to hell with him. Now Cassie is searching the past to find her mother, so she can tell her how to get him out of hell again, and how to fight demons in the process. And so she and Jonas find themselves back in the house Cassie grew up in, with Tony the vampire and his plethora of ghosts. Cassie did not count on running into Mircea and Marlowe though, and it are the ghosts that save them from being discovered, thanks to Billy and her childhood ghostly friend Laura.

Back in her Las Vegas hotel room, Cassie just wants some food but some witches have broken into her suite, and one of her bodyguards is anxious to serve them food and drink and snatches Cassie’s right out of her hands. Cassie has had enough, and refuses to deal with them at the moment, and so she shifts right out again. Hiding in Pritkin’s old room. What she doesn’t know, is that she shifts back in time in her sleep again, and meets Pritkin again. Of course he is her best bet to get to her parents, as they are supposedly guarded by demons. Fighting their way into their house is not easy, but she manages and has a very strange conversation with her father. Who is apparently not such a black mage as his reputation tells her. And her mother, the goddess Artemis, seems to have her own hidden agenda and uses Cassie to get her point through at the demon’s council. But first, Cassie will have to get into hell, and safe Pritkin. If he wants to be saved, that is.

And so, bouncing back from time to time, trying to save her loved ones and the world itself, there is no rest for Cassie. But more and more of her past is revealed and what the mages and vampires have been hiding from her. The witches are not her enemies, but they are the mages’ enemies. And apparently, Cassie has a Court with apprentices and novices, who need her. But when she knows nothing about being a Pythia, how can she help them?

And why is Mircea avoiding her? Of course he is busy with his work for the Vampire Council, but he could have at least talked to her on the phone. He did have time to check up on her through Marco …


This book/series is so packed full of action, it keeps getting more and more difficult to keep track of all the different plots and conspiracies and characters. You sure need to be focuses on your reading. Of course all the action makes you want to find out what happens next, but frankly, this series is kind of exhausting to read.
Sure, it is fun and entertaining and always surprising and original. But Cassie needs a break. Some quiet time to sort out her life and her love life, and learn about her powers and responsibilities as a Pythia. She is fighting gods who want to come back to Earth and use it as their playground again. Cassie needs all the help she can get, even if it is from the demons her mother used to hunt.

8 stars.

© 2014 Reviews by Aurian