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Embrace the Night
Embrace the Night
Embrace the Night
Audiobook15 hours

Embrace the Night

Written by Karen Chance

Narrated by Cynthia Holloway

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

4.5/5

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About this audiobook

Recently named the world's chief clairvoyant, Cassandra Palmer still has a thorn in her side. As long as Cassie and a certain master vampire-the sizzling-hot Mircea-are magically bound to each other, her life will never be her own.

The spell that binds them can only be broken with an incantation found in the Codex Merlini, an ancient grimoire. The Codex's location has been lost in the present day, so Cassie will have to seek it out in the only place it can still be found-the past.

But Cassie soon realizes the Codex has been lost for a reason. The book is rumored to contain some seriously dangerous spells, and retrieving it may help Cassie to deal with Mircea, but it could also endanger the world.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 24, 2008
ISBN9781400178193
Embrace the Night

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Reviews for Embrace the Night

Rating: 4.3076923076923075 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

39 ratings19 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I like the story, it's full of sexy vamps, mysteries and chase. But I can't stand the main character, Cassandra. She whines and is always tired when she is needed most. I gave it 4 stars for the story, it could have been 5 if Cassandra would grow up.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This was a real mess. Okay, I still like the Cassie character and other characters in series and there were some new tidbits revealed. Author has yet to get a good balance for me on Cassie's ability to teleport/shift and time-travel; seems awfully deus ex machina or deus ex saboteur plot conveniences (in some cases literally "deus" or at least godlike beings) on when she can and cannot rather than any good worldbuilding rules. For 90% of book was battle, battle, heated moments that went nowhere with different male leads in love triangle, battle, shift or fail to, battle, battle, shift or fail to ... rinse repeat. Book actually made me tired from all the fights and doubts about who was or wasn't ally. About 90% into the kindle edition some interesting bits and plot moved forward with some resolution (honestly if had not been for a goodreads group team challenge and I had already read past halfway point this might have become a "did-not-finish" book for me).

    It could just have been the kindle edition I was reading, but part of that last 10% was taken up by what read more like something in the Dorina series she wrote (Cassie and Micea weren't in it but Dorina was) -- possibly that was a sneak peek that failed to get labeled as such.

    Because there were interesting bits and I like the characters, did not give it a 1-star rating. I won't say I won't read on in series; but, it is one way, way down on my TBR pile. Admittedly, with my reading buddies all saying this third was the best in series and the one that hooked them -- I did have expectations. Okay, yes, at the end I did like that she and Micea did do the deed; but, by that time I was really too tired of all the back and forth to give a flying fig.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Cassie Palmer is still dealing with her new Pythia powers and basically trying not to get killed as any number of enemies of various species are after her. She's also still trying to figure out how to break the powerful spell binding her to master vampire Mercea. As usual, she never quite knows who she can trust, and she has a few false starts along the way. She learns quite a bit about mage Pritkin and his origins during her search for the magic spellbook that could potentially cancel the geis.One thing that is starting to annoy me about Cassie is that she never quite seems to think things through. She also is starting to use her time-travelling powers a little bit too much. How many times can you shift back in time and meet yourself and other people you know without having profound consequences? What happens if you really screw something up and wipe yourself out of existence? That doesn't really seem to enter Cassie's mind.I both liked and disliked the ending of this one. I liked the way Chance teased us with a very interesting potential solution to the geis problem. However, so many things had been building up to the final scene that it seemed to end pretty quickly. It does set things up nicely for the next volume. There are many relationships that began or took new turns in this novel, so it will be interesting to see how those turn out in the rest of the series.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    In the beginning... Cassie was raised by a vampire and valued because she has psychic abilities--she can see the future. In the first book she's on the run and gets tangled up with the vampire council because her previous "owner" wnats her back. Thing is, his master wants Cassie, too. Yes, in that way. Oh, there's a wanting. There's also a geis that binds Cassie and that master, Mircea. Enter Pritkin the mage. Mages and vampires are at war and Pritkin is saving Cassie, but not because he likes her, just because he hates vampires. Turns out Cassie is the heir to the Pythia--the head seer who has the power to not only see through time, but travel back and forth. She has a rival, there's fighting, there's Tony the vamp wanting her back and Mircea the vamp just wanting her.

    Here we are in book 3 and Cassie is the reluctant Pythia. She's still bound to Mircea by the geis and because she encountered him while traveling through time in earlier books the binding has been on him for centuries and it's killing him. (It's a thing. He put the binding on her, it was activated when they met in the present. When Cassie-under-geis went back through time in an earlier book and encountered unbound Mircea the geis, knowing he was the other one, jumped all over him, binding him centuries earlier than he'd bound her and resulting in him being bound twice when he placed the spell in the present time. Gods, how I love time travel.) Anyway, there's supposed to be a spell in the Codex Merlini that can remove the geis without killing her or Mircea so she and Pritkin are looking for it.

    BTW, it should be known that I have an immense crush on Pritkin the gruff mage with a mysterious past and sexy tattoos. This is why when the hints about his mysterious old age started flying and when Cassie encountered a past-him I guessed who he was and went to the squee place instead of the groan place.

    There's also a plotline invovling the deaths of Cassie's parents. She was always told she was adopted by Tony the vampire after her parents, who were in his employ, died in a car accident. Not so surprisingly, it wasn't an accident, Tony planned it to get control of Cassie and her powers from a young age. Cassie's mom was a runaway Pythian heir and her Dad was psychically powerful in his own right. Her dad is also now a soul in a jar kept in Tony's curio cabinet and Cassie is plenty pissed about that.

    The good news is, the geis is gone by the end of the book which frees Cassie (and Mircea) up to figure out if she really loves him or if it was all the spell. Personally I'm hoping she hooks up with Pritkin, but I'm like that.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A fun read with lots of action. Cassie Palmer shows courage and humor in extraordinary circumstances.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the third in the Cassie Palmer series and it successfully ties up the main plot threads concerning Cassie & Mircea (Vampire & love interest) and the fact that Cassie is the 'Pythia'. The characters in the book are intriguing and it was quite a shock to find out who Pritkin the war mage really was! I was hooked after read the first Cassie Palmer and will certainly be giving the new series a try when the book comes out later this year.You can't go far wrong in picking up the first Cassie Palmer book as an introduction to this type of novel
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    In order to end the geis binding her to Mircea, Cassandra Palmer must find the Codex Merlini. (As in, Merlin. I do love a touch of the King Arthur legends.) EMBRACE THE NIGHT opens with a terrific action scene and rarely stops. Cassie attracts trouble, much to the consternation of many of her companions, but to the great enjoyment of her readers. How can she help it, when everyone and their dog wants the Codex? In this book, Cassandra matures. I've always been fonder of Cassie than most urban fantasy heroines - her reasons for not wanting power are reasonable and she understands that she can't survive alone and sometimes has to trust others. As she learns to be more confident in her abilities I like her even more. To continue the character love, I also enjoy the various love interests. Karen Chance gives Mircea, the main love interest, incredible sex appeal. His scenes with Cassie will be earmarked in many a copy of EMBRACE THE NIGHT, I suspect. Yet she still manages to create viable reasons to keep him and Cassie apart. However, secondary love interest Pritkin is less reasonable (more homicidal) and just as lovable . . . er, sexy. (Okay, so I have a soft spot for a certain sort of gleefully armed men. Please don't quote me on the "gleefully armed." Crushes on imaginary characters defy my wit.) Pritkin and Cassie's scenes are no less hot than those with Mircea. (Tomas is mentioned, but not seen in the book.) I don't want to make it seem like the book is all sex - in three novels, Chance includes a grand total of two sex scenes. She does include a great deal of sexual tension and darn-close-to-sex though. Who doesn't love them some well-done sexual tension? LKH used to be able to do it, in the early Anita Blake books. Chance writes one intricate plot which the relationships serve to deepen, not to overpower. I found EMBRACE THE NIGHT easier to follow than TOUCH THE DARK or CLAIMED BY SHADOW. Cassie, for those who haven't read the first two novels, can travel through time. This necessarily complicates the story. Both TTD and CBS required a second reading before I fully understood just what happened in certain scenes, but I felt I had a much better grasp of the story in EMBRACE THE NIGHT. Chance isn't the best writer in the urban fantasy genre, but her books are fun and sexy. I need to be seeing her on more shelves.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5


    Best yet... Impossible to put down.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The story-telling quality is good although it has some annoying tendencies like trying to paint the female protagonist as stupid in an effort to create more drama in the story. I find that irritating to read. There is also too many time travels back and forth, back and forth, which is kinda dizzying to the reader. Having said that, the author has cleverly avoided paradoxes which is the usual pitfall of time tavel stories. This book is also fast-paced and never a boring moment. On the whole I would give this book a 3 and a half out of five.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Once again, Chance has written a major hit! This novel lived up to everything I have come to expect from Karen Chance's novels and I loved all of the new twists and turns! You can never tell how it will all end until you hit the last page. It's pure genius!! Without giving too much away I must say that I loved Pritkin's story! It was unbelievably imaginative and definitely took the series to a whole new level!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book strained my patience to the very limits, but my perseverance did pay off. ETN had a lot of back and forth just as book 2 did, which drove me to distraction, but unlike that one the ending has some satisfying resolutions and made me eager for the story to continue. The book does have issues, and it doesn’t hold up to the quality of book 1, but it was far better than book 2.The story starts out as anticipated - Cassie needs to find a way to break the geis Mircea laid on her. Her will to resist is fading, and Mircea is going insane. I have to admit, the author’s resolution to the dilemma was smart if extremely simple, and had been hinted at several times to astute readers. Some readers may find it disappointing; I was just glad it was over. The downside is that readers have to wait to the very last chapter for that resolution. Cassie needs Merlin’s Codex which should have a counter spell in it. But the Codex has been unwriting itself through the years, and so the complete text can only be found in the past. No problem for a time traveling clairvoyant. Wrong. Everyone either wants the book for themselves because it is so powerful, or they don’t want anyone to have it because it is so powerful. Which side of this debate Pritkin falls on is critical to the story. Until that last chapter, Cassie jumps back and forth through time, with small battles sprinkled in here and there, to find it. The action is fast paced and mostly useless, as she skips around like a little girl at a party. The main intent of all these trips is for Cassie to learn just who her allies are (especially Pritkin), but this could have been done in a less muddled and exhausting way. At times I become so frustrated I literally growled at the book! Hopefully, the author will realize that the constant time shifting is distracting and annoying to a reader.The awesome, and truly clever, revelations about Pritkin made the entire book worth reading. His character was beginning to get beyond aggravating as the author constantly had Cassie (and readers) guessing if he was on her side or not, just as in book 2. Yet, his involvement in the geis is much deeper than suspected, and he becomes a catalyst for the introduction of another powerful, and potentially plot inducing, character – Lord Rosier. Cassie also discovers some twists to her new power (even managing to duplicate Agnes’ time freezing trick, by accident of course), and sees how much responsibility it is to be Pythia.The ending saved this book from being mediocre. My fears that the geis would consume many books to come were laid to rest but the actions surrounding the geis provided lots of cool plotlines and enough resolution to make some progress. Readers learn who the golden god who calls Cassie “Herophile” is and the origin of the Pythia’s powers; we learn more about Pritkin’s past, the motivations of the Silver Circle; and, just what Mircea and Cassie truly feel. Cassie finally accepts the responsibility as Pythia, and makes alliances to protect herself and the timeline. Now that these things are tied up, the plot should be able to focus on the coming “war.” Though book 2 was a disappointment, this makes up for it. I will read book 4, Curse the Dawn. I have even ordered “Midnight’s Daughter” to see how she handles a story with a different protagonist.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I'll have to write a more coherent review later for my blog, but the plot in this one was very convoluted. I found myself flipping back a few pages over and over to figure out what exactly I had missed. I am very pleased that we got more Mircea (though not as much as I would have liked, haha!) in this book, as I really missed him in the second installment.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The third, and possibly last, of the Cassie Palmer books. (Happily Ms. Chance is writing another series in the same world, but I like Cassie and hope she comes back to her too.)Cassie is after the counterspell for the geis. She discovers a series of rather startling truths about Pritkin he'd rather she didn't know. Some of them I'm not so sure about - she touches on issues that would make me rather sit up and take notice with more attention and make me wonder if it would work, but there's enough willingness to suspend disbelief I didn't howl and throw the book away. It does make for some interesting twists and turns in the story mind.Various layers of shit hit the fan, and we find out more about Mircea's history, and Cassie's and the line of seers. It's a romp along story with a satisfying conclusion, but as Cassie herself says, it's not an end, it's a beginning: how do things develop with a new Pythia well established in her power and authority? Tied to the vampires by her history, rather than the magi? With a long list of people who want her dead?There's definitely more that could be written and fun to read here.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I love how you are thrown straight into the action from the first page - it can be a little disorientating but since I am eading one after another its not so bad for me. I really enjoy the fast pace and complex plotting, Chance does a great job balancing all the threads of the story.The characters are just so interesting from Pritkin and Mircea to the kitchen help. Thankfully Cassie didn't annoy me quite so much in this installment as in previous, though there is still too much of her clueless routine. I'm glad she finally managed to figure out a few things - I hope she sustains the attitude through the next Curse the Dawn, which I'm just starting.Really the series has only crept up to a 3.5 stars but I have decided to be a little more generous and give it 4 :)
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Cassie is still trying to remove the spell that binds her to the vampire, Mircea. Unfortunately, the only counter spell seems to be in the mysterious Codex that is lost. Cassie uses her power for time travel and learns more than she ever wanted to know.These book are full of action and magic. The world building is complex but consistent. The characters are very believeable. The sex scenes are intense but not skanky. Read in series.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I absolutely love this series of book. I can not get away from them. Once Cassie discovers her ability to time travel with she make a mistake that she will not be able to fix. Will she be able to help Mircea so that she does not lose her love? And if she fixs the problem will he still love her, or was this all a spell?
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I put off reading this book because I didn't remember much of the first two installments of the Cassandra Palmer Series, and I didn't have time to reread them. The only thing I could remember was Mircea and losing interest in his character during the second book. I had completely forgotten about John Pritkin. Now there's a character I can get into. Whereas Mircea is flat, kind of obnoxious, and rather boring, Pritkin has some actual development. He's also a sexy, asskicking ubermage. How cool is that? I'm also tickled by the pockets of humor throughout Chance's writing. I remember, now, why I was so excited over this series. Hope Book 4, Curse the Dawn, which comes out April 2009 continues to deliver the goods.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Cassandra thought she'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time...turns out tho, that her being made Pythia was actually the culmination of some truly long-range planning. I really enjoyed the first two books in this series and was waiting anxiously for this one. I enjoyed the book and must give kudos to the author for weaving a complex tale. She did a great job of weaving together the threads that had been cast in the first two books. I was breathless when I finished.Cassie, as Pythia, can travel through time. Unfortunately, she never got any training and if there was a manual...well, let's just say that apparently nobody wants her to have one. Instead, it seems that all the people she meets just want her to trust them to tell her what she needs to do. The problem with that is she's not sure who, if anyone, she can trust. Cassie is involved with vampires, demons, faeries, talking skulls, magic books...well, the list is really endless.But this is not a mindless tale of love. Everything is not laid out plainly--the intricacies of actions taken while traveling back in time are brought home in this final book. I can't say much else without giving away too much. I will say that I'm not sorry I read these three books and I hope the author will give us future glimpses into Cassie's world.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Embrace the Night
    3 Stars

    Cassandra Palmer, the newly named Pythia, is on a quest to locate the Codex Merlini so that she can break the geas that binds her to the powerful and sexy Master Vampire, Mircea Basarb. Unfortunately for Cassie, not only are there numerous factions interested in the Codex for their own reasons, but the book itself has vanished from history and she will have to make use of all her powers in order to discover its whereabouts.

    The story arc in this series is very compelling and the characters are intriguing. Unfortunately, neither of these manages to completely compensate for the problematic writing style and drawn out narration.

    Events occur out of the blue and the details leading up to them are only forthcoming later on. The resulting effect is one of disorientation and confusion, and the feeling that something has been missed. Moreover, Cassie frequently goes of on long, tedious, boring and irrelevant tangents describing people and events from her past that have absolutely no connection to the story at hand. The pacing of the narrative slows down significantly as a result and it is difficult for the reader to retain focus, especially if one is listening to the audiobook as the mind starts to wander.

    Nevertheless, there is some interesting character development and the twists and turns in the last 25% of the book make for particularly exciting reading. The revelations concerning Pritkin’s origins and his past make him the most interesting character in the series thus far, and his attract/repel relationship with Cassie is one of the highlights. The other is the continuation and resolution of the geas storyline as Cassie and Mircea finally complete what they started three books ago.

    All in all, this series is rather hit and miss - good story and characters, but poor writing and execution. At this point, I’m willing to continue as I’m sufficiently interested in learning what happens with Cassie, Pritkin and Mircea.