Curse the Dawn is the fourth book in the Cassandra (Cassie) Palmer series by Karen Chance (after Touch the Dark, Claimed by Shadow, and Embrace the Night). The series focuses on clairvoyant-turned-Pythia Cassie Palmer, the world’s foremost clairvoyant (whose powers are intermittent) who can also manipulate time and space (albeit clumsily with hilarious results). The other major characters include smooth and seductive vampire senator Mircea and shoot-first-ask-questions-later battle mage and all-around mystery man, Pritkin. I’ll be very spoiler-lite and talk mostly about the series as a whole, I think.

This is a series I can’t stop reading for the simple reason that the characters are engaging. The plots are very all-over-the-place, the descriptions of scenes and images are often hard to understand or a little clunky, the diction and language are inconsistent and a little annoying, but Chance has done something some well- and tightly-written fantasies have failed to do for me: she has utterly and truly engaged my interest with what happens to her characters, even the most insignificant ones.

Unlike the other series in the genre I’ve read, Chance is willing to do some crazy things to her characters. And I’m not talking “dangerous” things or “complicated” things — I mean crazy crazy things with hilarious results. Like swapping bodies. Like compromising situations involving time travel, famous historical events, and mage conspiracies that turn things on their heads. I really enjoy those moments. This series is much more light-hearted and comedic than the other series, definitely full of self-referential tongue-in-cheek moments that make me giggle. Sometimes a good giggle is a lot more effective to me than a good moment of action or a good dramatic moment. Not saying I don’t get plenty of enjoyment out of series with little humor, but it’s a different kind. If I could satisfy all of my reading tastes and desires with a single book or series, forever, then I wouldn’t be the wide-ranging voracious [fantasy] reader that I am. The Cassie Palmer series fills a gap, satisfies a need/desire for me, and perhaps that’s why I keep reading it. No other series has such a clunky, goofy, naggy, whiney, amusing heroine who interacts with such interesting main male characters. (Pritkin is my personal favorite; I suppose that means I am a Cassie/Pritkin shipper? Dare I say it? I never usually go for the vamp when there’s a choice, and Mircea is no exception. Crazy battle mages for the win!)

Midnight’s Daughter, an off-shoot novel to the Cassie Palmer series, was not a necessary read before Curse the Dawn but because I’d read it, I had a more enriching experience, I think, because the action in that novel sort of bisected this one (off-screen) a bit. Also, Cassie sees a photo — or several — of Dorina, the main character introduced in Midnight’s Daughter, and having read Midnight’s Daughter I understood the ironic context of Cassie seeing the photo. Without that knowledge Cassie’s suspicions and jealousy wouldn’t have been as amusing. But reading that novel wasn’t necessarily necessary to the series, but considering they’re set in the same world at the same time I have a feeling that Chance is shaping things up to coincide between books. There’s a huge conflict she’s building toward and between the two series, she’ll be able to show two different sides of it (the fey side, and the vampire/mage side). I’m also assuming there will be character crossover, as there was already some crossover with Mircea in Midnight’s Daughter.

All in all I enjoyed this book. Books 3 and 4 of this series were much better than 1 and 2; based on that I can’t wait for more. If you enjoy urban fantasy and humor, with a little dash o’ crazy thrown in, this is a fun series for that and you may as well dive right into it, starting with the beginning.