Sunday, October 7, 2012

Fury's Kiss by Karen Chance (Midnight's Daughter #3)


Fury’s Kiss: 5 stars
It has been so long since I read the first two books in the Dorina Basarab series that I can’t tell you how long after the last book finished that this book picks up.  Sorry. 
It starts out with Dory on a mission.  She is working contractually with the North American Vampire Senate.  Her partner is Lawrence.  He is a first level master with three gifts: smell (they call him a hound), he can essentially split his body up into tiny particles, move around and put them back together, and mental abilities (similar to Mircea’s).  He asked to be paired with Dory, but she doesn’t usually work with others.  The mission goes terribly wrong, and we find Dory in some sort of experimental lab with the lovely Louis-Cesare trying to get her out.  Only she is Dorina and doesn’t remember who Louis-Cesare is so she does NOT make it easy on him.

The vampires are under attack and they don’t even know from whom.  Is it the Dark Circle, the Fey, the Irin, other vampires, smugglers, an unknown entity?  Marlowe and Mircea are leading the hunt and running themselves ragged.  Dory doesn’t remember anything and so they must use Mircea’s mental capabilities to search Dory memory as to what happened the night with Lawrence.  This isn’t as easy as they thought, but does yield some clues, but they have to go back to her memory another time.  There is so much else that happens with the story line and I can’t go into most of it because you must just read it to get the whole picture, but I adored the ending!  I am so happy for Dory!  I believe there was a small cameo from Cassie Palmer, but we never see her again so she still doesn’t know that Dory is Mircea’s daughter and not the “other woman”.  I am assuming we will see more of this in the next Cassie Palmer novel.    
The secondary characters are some of the best I’ve ever encountered!  I absolutely loved the character development of Ray in this novel.  Prior to this, he was sniveling and annoying.  Which is how he is when he is in stressed situations, and is the baseline for most Karen Chance books, but we got to experience him as smart, resourceful, thoughtful and funny.  I also really grew to appreciate Zheng-zi.  I love Stinky’s contributions (although Dory is lucky that Claire hasn’t left for Faerie because he IS a baby and she spends minimal time with him as a caregiver).  I even loved the little maniac troll chess piece.  I loved Louis-Cesare’s chef, Verelle! He was quite adorable.  I’m not sure how I feel about Ǣsubrand and I definitely do not know how to pronounce that name.      

Cons:
  • While all of the scenes in the book are necessary to the story line, each scene individually goes on too long.  It’s like having a conversation with that person who is telling a story and you just want to say, “T-t-today, junior!”  This is not new to Fury’s Kiss.  I have found all of Karen Chance’s books to be this way. 
  • Some of the scenes leave me confused.  The author’s writing style is that she will describe a situation or person in detail before telling you who it is or where we are.  It is usually someone or somewhere familiar so that along the line at some point, the reader is able to figure out who it is.  This is a great technique, except that in writing paranormal books there is undoubtedly people and places that are unfamiliar because they don’t exist anywhere but in the author’s head.  And the author uses this same technique for the places/people that we don’t know.  The reader is left wondering if they missed something and should recognize this new entity.

Unanswered Questions (these, admittedly, could be unanswered because I, as a reader, am obtuse):
  • I still don’t know who was behind Lawrence in the last scene that we saw him in.  Was it Mircea?  Was it Dorina?
  • What were those lava lamp blobs in the Consul’s secret passageways?
  • What is going on with the Irin?  We’ve never met them before and they just flew in and out of scenes saying things like, “You don’t know what you are doing.  Stay out of this,” and then fly off.  
Favorite quote:

“Mine,” I murmured, as blue eyes met mine, wide and startled.  And then closed again as he took my breath in a kiss so consuming that I barely noticed when the storm continued on toward the horizon, the midnight wings showing vague starlight through in patches as it passed overhead.  As it missed us. 

“Yours,” Louis-Cesare groaned.

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