Cassandra Palmer Series Overview

Cassie Palmer by Karen Chance

Contains Spoilers for the Series

So, I haven't actually read this entire series. I got up to book 8 (Ride the Storm) before I decided to stop. I'd been getting frustrated with the series during the last few books and Ride the Storm had me at a stand-still. I really think the whole Pritkin storyline killed the series for me. That aside, I thought the Cassie Palmer series was fairly good to start with.

So, Cassie Palmer is this girl with clairvoyant powers who gets thrust into a job policing the timeline, known as Pythia. Her powers are basically gifted to her via the Greek and Roman god Apollo... who turns out to not be one of the good guys. Cassie has no idea how to use her new powers and basically has to figure this all out on her own. And there's vampires and stuff involved, so that's fun. Also mages and a scattering of witches, none of whom can actually help her figure out her powers. She still hasn't quite figured them out by book 8, but she does get more competent with them and I'm sure will eventually figure all of that shit out.

In addition to the "not knowing how to use her powers effectively" thing, Cassie has to deal with a really gross curse binding her to vampire Mircea Basarab and her bestie, Pritkin, getting himself cursed/dead in such a way as to, by my understanding, hurt Cassie's present. I really was having fun with this, I swear, until the second book of Pritkin needing to be saved ended with him still not being saved... and then Ride the Storm just frustrated the hell out of me.

But anyway, that gross curse binding Cassie to Mircea is called a geis. It's all explained really reasonably that the geis basically makes sure that the cursed woman (because it's usually a woman) will always end up attracted to the person (usually a dude) who set the curse until such time as a marriage is consummated, because of course that's the only way we get to have sex at the time this geis was created. Oh, and the dude that set the curse can designate someone other than himself to consummate the marriage. Add to that Pythian time-travel powers and a couple of vampires and you've got yourself a gross love triangle and and even worse main couple for the series. Yes, it gets worse. Cassie ends up "vampire married" to Mircea. Mircea, it turns out, put the curse on her so she'd be more likely to say yes to bringing his dead wife out of the timeline and into the present. So... yeah... that's great. I was so done at that point. Really seemed like Cassie was, too, but I'm not entirely sure so... yeah...

Moving on to Pritkin's whole deal... I like Pritkin as a character. He's the no-nonsense protector/magic man with a surprise dark past. And, ya know, British and blond and always wearing that big ol' leather coat. Until he gets cursed to death and then we get to go back in time and deal with pre-Pritkin Emrys/Myrridan/Merlin for entirely way too long, in my opinion. He's finally uncursed at the end of Ride the Storm in a fashion that had me wanting to throw the book across the room... Rosier literally hands him the counterspell that I, and Cassie by the way, was previously under the impression had to be counterspelled onto Pritkin by Rosier. But no, could have given him the counterspell at any time previously and skipped the hanging out with Myrridan thing. Like... yes, there's some other stuff happening being that far back in time, but the whole Pritkin plot could have been resolved by giving him the counterspell and getting out of dodge?! Just... ugh!!!

Rosier starts out as a villain and basically ends this run of the series as a formless bunch of smoke, I think. He's kind of alright once we get to know him outside of the villain context. I think mostly because, at that point, he has zero powers and is just tromping around after Cassie and Pritkin at that point. All the menace has gone out of him.

Other characters of note here are Jonas, the dude Pritkin and Cassie ended up helping get back in charge of the Mages. He's kind of fun for the first book he's in and then he just becomes useless and annoying. He basically tries to teach Cassie one Pythian trick and then buggers off to deal with Ares research... meantime keeping Cassie's court from her and giving Cassie zero information about anything. Then there's Cassanova, who is a mostly cranky vampire manager of the hotel Cassie's living in. Augustine, a part-fey mage designer who's fun to read about. At least, his designs are. Rhea, who, it turns out was Agnes and Jonas' daughter. I like her. She actually gives Cassie info Cassie needs. Agnes herself, the previous Pythia. She's around, kinda. Cassie's dead parents put in a couple of appearances. I kind of like her dad. Her mom's Artemis, the former goddess, who we learn decimated the Demon Lords previously.

The Cassie Palmer series does this thing with Greek and Roman mythologies that I think we all tend to do when initially getting into it: mixing them together like they're one in the same. While they are very similar, the Romans did co-opt the Greek mythology so there's overlap, but they're really not the same. There's also some mixing in of other mythologies -- Norse and Egyptian, if I'm remembering correctly -- that happens when Jonas is attempting to explain the gods attempts to return to Cassie. It's, uh, not entirely great. Each of these mythologies is their own thing and, while other cultures may have borrowed pieces of other mythologies from time to time, equating the Greek gods with the Norse ones is not okay. I get it, it's a fantasy book and Karen Chance can technically play around with this stuff as she sees fit, but it does not sit right with me.

That said, I did enjoy the mythology Karen Chance spun into the story. I liked the way the different "worlds" were explained. Heaven and Hell dimensions exist and there's a particular way they and their creatures can interact with each other and different energies existing in different worlds and all that. That I liked. It made sense.

What did not make sense was how the Pythias from across time tended to deal with each other. I went on a bit of a rant about this in my Ride the Storm review, but I'm going to reiterate it here. The Pythias pretty much chose a no-contact policy unless someone was apparently messing up the timeline. No contact. No questioning. No agreeing to maybe help train a Pythia they didn't have time to while they were alive... No "Oh hey, this girl seems to keep popping back to a particular time even though we've sent her home four times already, perhaps we should find out why?" Until... Gertie apparently enlisted the help of several to apprehend Cassie and one of Agnes' former acolytes and then they barely ask questions until Cassie and said acolyte basically made them listen. Oh, and then, in order to later stop Ares from popping into the Human World, we suddenly have a ton more Pythias popping into help send him back where he belongs. This is just one of the reasons I decided to drop the series. Annoyance at Pythias.

Speaking of the end of Ride the Storm, Ride the Storm had a take on Arthurian legend that I was kind of into. It mainly centered around the family actually being Fey starting with Nimue... who is apparently Arthur and Morgaine's grandmother in this version of the tale. It was alright. Would probably have been more interesting if it hadn't been a lore-dump by Rosier three books into trying to save Pritkin's life, or had actually more to do with the plot but... yeah. That was a thing I actually kind of enjoyed from Ride the Storm.

Yeah so, the Cassie Palmer series is a lot. It's not altogether bad, it's just that the continuing storyline was bugging me to no end. I haven't even mentioned the war that Cassie barely takes part in... because that's mostly in the background and too complicated to explain here. I'm really not sure where I stand on the recommendation status of the Cassie Palmer series. It does start off well and the fight scenes are relatively easy to follow and the time-travel is largely pretty good. It was great while my patience with it lasted.