Tempt the Stars: Cassie Palmer #6 by Karen Chance

Tempt the Stars is the sixth installment in Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer saga. Because it has been entirely too long since I read the first five, nor do I have past reviews available for reference, let me attempt to catch you up to speed on this:

Cassandra is an orphan who was raised by particularly unfriendly vampires. Tony, the head of the house, actually orchestrated the car crash which killed her parents, and has her father's soul trapped in a paperweight which he keeps on his desk.
Fun fact: Cassie is a clairvoyant, which--for anybody who needs a freshening up on their terminology--means that she can see and interact with ghosts. But that isn't all Cassie can do, as we are soon to discover.
Cassie runs away from Tony in her late teens and exists "on the run" for a few years before she goes back to Tony's for a few more in a failed attempt at revenge. She lived with a null-witch--whose only real ability was to create a void of magic, etc., which basically allowed Cassie a safezone because all of Tony's thugs' searches and spells just zoomed right over and around the house as if it didn't exist.

Now, do keep in mind that I'm recounting this years into reading this series with a ridiculous amount of literature having been read between each book and those and this one, so I'm probably going to either fuck up hardcore or leave things out--which is approximately the same thing as the former. So I'm doing my best here.

Anyway, so Cassie ends up involved with more vampires, but the game totally changes. She hooks up with Mircea, who is actually one of the most powerful Master vampires in the North American Senate, and Tony's boss.

Moving forward, a prophesy ends up making Cassie an heir to the throne of Pythia, i.e. world's chief clairvoyant and possessor of way more power than any one person ought to have. Thus she is now a serious target because there are an intolerable number of people who either want to recruit her or kill her, and she really doesn't want to be either, nor does she dare use this new power she suddenly has but doesn't know how to use.
Besides that, remember Mircea? Yeah. So apparently he put a geis on her, which is a super powerful spell which puts off any potential would-be suitor--i.e. a metaphysical claim. And Cassie's just about had it with being ordered and jerked around. The majority of the third book actually revolves around her attempts to locate a book called the Codex Merlini, which contains the spell necessary to break the geis, but it also contains some other mega-powerful spells which would put the earth in Hardcore Danger.
Oh. Btw. There's this super infuriating yet compelling (and strangely attractive, although not in anything resembling the traditional sense) war mage by the name of Pritkin comes into the mess, and he's both guarding and training Cassie... or something like that. I mean, he is. But he also like, beats her ass into the ground "for her own good" (although it totally is) and has a habit of being an all-around obstinate ass.

For the record, Cassie does actually get elected Pythia--by the power of the title, not the people who seem to think they get to decide who gets the throne. The power picks the person it deems most worthy--although that in itself is a major shit show. She also has a show down with Apollo, the god in charge of her power who has apparently decided that she should die. She isn't the one who bites the dust, btw.
Only then Moira, one of the initiates who was passed up for the throne--and was the favored one, which really causes her absolute hatred for Cassie, the scene stealer--decides to try to go back in time before Cassie was even born to kill her mother and completely change the timeline. Which, btw, is a really bad idea for more reasons than Cassie.
Cass kills her, too, although it's no easy feat.

Oh. For the record? There's a segment where Cassie and Pritkin end up switching bodies? And it's actually kind of funny because she wakes up in his body with a raging boner. She also "manscapes" his body, hahaha. His displeasure was highly amusing.

So anyway. The last book ended at Cassie's coronation, to which she wasn't even invited because they hired a look-alike to take her place on account of all the death threats and shit that she'd been getting. Eeeexceept that Cassie had to get in because reasons, and she ends up, like, half dead and Pritkin--who, it turns out, is actually half-incubus (and the only one in history, which actually also makes him Merlin, fun fact)--has to save her by basically having sex with her, because it's the only way he knows how to do a power transfer. Except that this means that Pritkin's father shows up and takes the mage back to hell because apparently there was a deal between them.
At this point, Cassie is on the field in her birthday suit and Pritkin appears to blink out of existence, meanwhile Cassie has to kill a Spartoi--and I honestly do not remember enough to explain what the fuck that thing is except that it's absurdly powerful and she killed it naked because she was pissed.

So now we've gotten to book 6! Yayyy!
Oi. I know.

Tempt the Stars is pretty much entirely focused on Cassie's desperate attempt(s) to rescue Pritkin from his father in this particular hell. It's not a "seven circles" situation as illustrated in Dante's inferno. The real explanation is far too lengthy and complicated for this blog, plus it's more interesting to read in Chance's words, if I haven't already completely eradicated any reason for you to actually go read this series from all the stupid spoilers. (Sorry.) But there is a lot I haven't covered! In my defense. Which is weak, I know.

Cassie goes back in time to ask Laura, her childhood ghosty friend from Tony's, where her parents are, and employs the aid of the ghost she can't get rid of. She then shifts back in time to about a week and a half or two weeks previous, before Pritkin was gone, and takes him further back in time to when her parents were alive and living in Tony's guest cottage when she was an infant. That, by the way, is a complete shit show. But her mom does actually give her the information that she needs in order to retrieve Pritkin.

Long story short, Cassie gets help from one willing and one unwilling person(s) and the group make the trip to Rosier's (Pritkin's father) court, where chaos ensues, but they manage to acquire Pritkin. But they don't save him, because Cassie inadvertently ends up linking them back to Earth instead of the Shadowlands, and the demon counsel's guards follow them into the fucking hotel in which she lives. They get a meeting set up with the aforementioned counsel, who keeps Pritkin, and eventually she gets summoned for their meeting. I'm skipping over a lot of other mayhem, by the way. This is why you should read these books. They are constant mayhem and tension and infuriating bickering between characters. But they're so brilliantly written, good God.
Ahem. Anyway.

The end of this novel is so enormously infuriating that I seriously don't know that I have ever been so mad at a book in my entire life. This doesn't mean it was a bad ending. Oh no. Just infuriating. Because I'm so emotionally/psychologically invested and caught up in this series that it's hard for me not to get emotional about them--and knowing me (although you don't) that's really a big deal.  The counsel kills Pritkin. Cassie basically tries to become a martyr, although the same counsel that killed Pritkin saved her, and then gave her the tool to save Pritkin as well as the only person who could help her accomplish the task: Rosier.

Do you understand yet why I'm so bloody mad? Probably not. But it was maddening and I'm still sorta steaming, honestly.

That, friends, is the sign of a good book. That, right there, when a piece of literature has the power over a person to so affect their psychology that they are caught up for extended periods of time post-closure--although that fucking cliffhanger was not a closure.

I gave it five stars on GoodReads because it was fucking fantastic. The romantic tension is sparse in this one, but tactfully placed, and beautifully executed. The dialogue is just as perfect as it always is, and the descriptions are elegant and precise. If there were ever a series that I would recommend fantasy-lovers to read, it would be this one.

The Fifth Sister: (Parched Series 4) Z.L. Arkadie

Sidenote: Apparently the cover images of the books after The Seventh Sister are all minuscule and will probably end up looking really shitty and pixely from here on out. My apologies, but there's really nothing I can do.

The Fifth Sister is the fourth book in Z.L. Arkadie's "Parched" series, with which you should hereby be familiar.
Every single book in this collection is remarkably short and I can read them all in approximately 2 or 3 hours, although that time ends up being split up across the span of a few days, just due to my university schedule/requirements.

This book decides to follow Glo, who is the sister with the power of fire, and for once in Arkadie's series, a sister has a voice which is her own, although yet retaining a semblance of both of the other sisters we've followed thus far.
Glo is apparently 43 without looking a day over 21, with the same exact hair and build as her sisters, whom she has no idea exist. She is attending therapy weekly, because she feels intensely indifferent, frequently anxious and lately depressed. She feels as though she lives in a bubble, and very little exists within it for her. The rest of the world is without, and she considers it almost more of a Lego-land, which... in retrospect, doesn't really tell us nearly as much as Arkadie wants it to.
Glo lives in Cleveland and works in a diner on the ground floor of her apartment building in the warehouse district. This seems unrealistic and bizarrely coincidental for what commences over the course of the novel. Simultaneously, Glo's best friend Aries and her boyfriend are remarkably similar to her, in that they never age, and Aries seems to be able to influence people by touching them. Glo spends the first several pages of this novel feeling anxious, as though she knows instinctually that something is about to change, that her life is meant for something, but she is absolutely clueless about what that might be.

Once again we find rampant grammatical and punctuation errors including word omissions, misspellings, random commas and misplaced quotation marks. The descriptions are mediocre at best and leave one with only a semblance of that which Arkadie is trying to accomplish here. Perhaps it is because of the nature of Glo's current psychology, but considering that this is a theme throughout the course of her novels, I am loath to make that acquiescence. At this point in the game, I am more apt to argue that Arkadie, while creative in her concepts and the layout of her plot, is a mediocre writer in desperate need of a good editor who really ought to take the extra time to proofread her own material.

Glo, like Clarity, has a neighbor in her apartment building for whom she sort of has the hots, and is--surprise, bloody surprise--a vampire. And! SURPRISE BLOODY SURPRISE! Has the exact same powers as Glo. Lord Jesus, could these novels get any more predictable!? Somehow I doubt it.

I don't think that anybody is going to be surprised to hear this: Aries is Glo's [replacement] Guardian (apparently her guardians who were supposed to model 'parents' died in a car/plane crash (it's questionable) years ago) and Raz, Aries boyfriend, is Glo's Wek. Are you surprised? I certainly hope not.

Glo and Finn end up collapsing a lab where Tal and Cort (a couple of names you may remember from the last book as Shams--or vampires who've now acquired the ability to do magic of sorts and drink other vampires)--are forcing chemists to create a drug they call Zombie, but what the drug does goes entirely unexplained until further notice.

Once that's done, they make a trip down to Alabama because Finn knows that's Cort's next target. When they get there, it's a ghost town, much like--surprise surprise--Moonridge was when Quenched closed out.
When that situation is dealt with (in as much capacity as it can be, honestly), Finn and Glo travel up to Ohio and into Jari, where they find Vayle, who is still there--because it's only been like, 5 minutes his time. He has, surprise surprise, decided not to shirk his duties and revert back to human. At his point, Vayle leads the last sister and her bonded vampire out of Jari and to the house of Benel.
The end.

No seriously. That's the end of the book. Frankly, they're more like short stories than novels, and I almost can't even believe I shelled out $4 each for the next two. They hardly seem worth it. I do, however, intend to see this thing to the end, regardless of how it continues to pain or entertain me.

I gave it 2 stars on Goodreads. It didn't really deserve any better than that. Frankly, I'm disenchanted with the series, as if you haven't noticed. (I mean it's not like it's apparent or anything...)

Quenched: Book 3 by Z.L. Arkadie

First and foremost: My sincerest apologies for that dreadful picture quality on the cover. It was legit the biggest file I could find on Google... and I was too lazy to search anywhere else. Sue me.

So Quenched picks up pretty immediately where Parched leaves off, with Clarity resuming as our narrator.

However, the opening several paragraphs of the book are so excessively flowery in terms of the verbiage that it's ridiculous and at moments to the point of intolerable.
A few examples:

"...the blood pumping organ in my chest..." >> Really? Heart wouldn't suffice? I mean, I'd have pardoned it if it was included in some kind of comment about its effectiveness at its function, but all she's getting at is that she's heartbroken from being unceremoniously dumped.

"When their warm breath hits the cold air, the impact generates a misty cloud of frost in front of their faces." >>Although I really do have to acquiesce that I quite enjoy this sentence.

"I remember standing here sometimes on days long past doing just this, admiring how nearby skyscrapers reflect on its" (the UN building) "mirrored skin."
         This is followed immediately by "A lot has changed since then--a lot" as if Arkadie couldn't come up with a better emphasizer than another use of "a lot" because that really tells us anything at all.

Another thing: in the section directly after the above examined, Clarity announces that they are "whizzing past the tops of tall skyscrapers like Superman over Metropolis OR BATMAN SWINGING THROUGH GOTHAM CITY." Excuse me, Ms. Arkadie and Ms. Clarity, but I believe this "swinging superhero" to whom you refer is actually Spiderman and he swings through New York City, not Gotham. I'm just saying.
If you're going to talk about how your life is "as if [you're] living in the pages of a comic book" you should at least get your heroes right. Batman does zero swinging, unless we are on the subject of punches, perhaps, but in this context? Nuh uh.

Moving further through the text just provides more and more instances of these unpardonable errors. Like, maybe I'm being excessively critical on too many fronts, maybe I'm just being picky, but there are some things that are just too ridiculous to let go. The walls of her morphs-into-exactly-what-I-love bedroom are painted lime green, and anybody who knows anything about interior design knows that lime green is too bright/loud of a color for anybody to friggin sleep with. I mean, there are people who will argue with me, but it's a legitimate psychological thing. Furthermore, when she gets on a plane to fly halfway across the globe, she decides to start reading The Iliad and The Odyssey and, because she "reads so fast" she's done with The Iliad in half an hour. SO MUCH BULLSHIT. I don't even care if you're superhuman or whatever. Just no. Absolutely not. 
Skipping over a multitude of glaring grammatical and punctuation errors as well as excessive over-exaggeration, we come to a really ridiculous geographical error. They end up looking for Exgesis (whose name I realize is unfamiliar to you, but I'm sure I'll get to the actual plot at some point or another when I'm done tearing this thing apart limb from limb) in the Black Hills. Which are in west-central South Dakota and extending a bit into Wyoming. And then this boob announces that "Just as [she] thought, he's not in North Dakota." Well how the hell would you know, you idiot? You're in South Dakota.
Granted. I'm a little prejudiced there because I live in the northern Dakota. But seriously?! SERIOUSLY!? DO YOU NOT KNOW HOW TO USE A MAP?! GOOGLE IS FREE! PLEASE USE IT.

Like, don't get me wrong. I'm obviously still reading this thing because the plot is still mostly enjoyable and interesting. Except that there are things being omitted and forgotten about and there are ends she neglects to tie up where they obviously ought to be. And don't you sit there telling me in your head that maybe she's just waiting to divulge it--because she isn't. They aren't things that make any sense whatsoever to withhold, and the characters are having the conversations in which said information really deserves to be divulged. Like, it's part of the damned conversation and it's like they just forget to friggin say it. There's no rhyme nor reason to it; there's no mental explanation of why said information isn't passed on. It just isn't.

Anyway, so in terms of plot, here's the deal: Clarity and Baron have "broken up" because she spent a couple of days in Enu, which amounted to a couple of years on Earth, and because Baron doesn't know that--still doesn't, because she neglects to provide that simple information which would clear a lot of air--he's "moved on." But, because she needs him, she goes back to get his help and they end up going on the aforementioned trip across the globe to find Lario--Fawn's sociopath ex-boyfriend, i.e. Exgesis. While in Europe, they make up and have a fuckton of sex for like, 4 days. Whatever.
So Baron's got a portion of Clarity's light now because they're bonded, which means that he's the "vampire with the power of light" and they're in search of the vampire with the "power of the sun" currently sought by Exgesis.  This is where Zillael and Vayle come in from book 2 (The Seventh Sister), even though I didn't really do a very good job of explaining or reviewing that one in the previous post (sorry). So Zillael is the sister with the power of the sun, and the vampire with whom she's bonded has a portion of her power.

Is it just me, or does this seem slightly cheesy and formulaic the longer we persevere? I dunno. I still enjoy them, but English-majoring my reading material takes some of the fun out of it. So it goes.

The three sisters plus the two vampires and their Weks travel into a place called Nowhere--yes, seriously--and battle off a bunch of soulless beings (which notably resemble Dementors from Harry Potter, and I really wish I was kidding) who disintegrate into ash when Clarity blasts them with light. Honestly, although the sisters are somewhat portrayed to be equal here, Clarity is really elevated to a level above and her Mary Sue tendencies are thicker than the others. Granted, Clarity has her downfalls, but Arkadie struggles to convince you that her downfalls are actually her strengths, and I must admit that I'm not especially buying it.
Clarity returns the leaf from the tree of life--which Fawn had given to Lario to make him human, but we know how well that went--to its place and Nowhere is restored to a healthy, beautiful place. At this point, Felix shows back up and provides the vampires an ultimatum. Over the course of the next 7 hours, while the ground remained churning, they had the chance to either become human and leave it all behind, or to continue on the journey with the girls until it was over, at which point they would be returned the option. Baron, of course, immediately declines to continue taking care of and assisting Clarity, but Vayle is caught in an internal battle because he knows that Zillael loves her Wek more than she loves him and thus his motivation is compromised. The group leaves him crouched there, staring at the ground, and goes home. He is left with three doors remaining open out of the place: one to his old home, one to the home where his mother has moved, and one back to the house of Benel, where he would continue the path he'd been born for.

The novel ends with Zillael and Derek taking a trip back home to Moonridge for candy apples, but upon their return the town is entirely empty and they don't get them. Seriously, the book ends with "I guess there's no rest for the weary, or candy apples either."
Seriously, Arkadie? Seriously? That was the best you could do? I say nay nay.

In the end, frankly, I'm loath to give this one more than three stars on Goodreads. I'm not even entirely certain that it deserves three, though. I'm teetering on the 2 and 3 mark. We'll see where it goes.

Book 4 is called The Fifth Sister, which seems kind of silly to me, but whatever. I bought it, so I'm going to read it. Honestly, as much as it's beginning to pain me, I'm probably going to continue on through the entire series just to see how the thing ends. Call me masochistic, but I prefer martyr. lol.

That's what I have for you. It's a bit longer, so I hope that's more pleasing. Or...something.

Until next time,
--Emily Renae