Fury's Kiss (Dorina Basarab, #3)

by Karen Chance

[Jo]

Originally posted on Once Upon a Bookcase.

I'm a huge, huge fan of Karen Chance; of both her Cassandra Palmer series and her Dorina Basarab series, so it was an absolute no brainer that I would buy the latest book following Dorina, Fury's Kiss. And as ever, Chance didn't disappoint!

No summary this time. I simply cannot give one without spoiling major parts of the story, because woah, Fury's Kiss is one hell of a ride! The description above will have to do you.

Compared with the previous two books in Dory's series, Fury's Kiss is more of a journey of self-discovery for her. Don't worry, this doesn't take the place of the usual action packed plots we've come to expect from Chance - if anything, Chance has seriously upped her game in this area (more on that later). But there is a lot of focus on her memories, and finding out exactly what happened before her capture. This involves a lot of digging - however, Dory is a dhampir, and as such, there's more than one side of her. So digging in her memory brings her face to face with her vampire side. A side of herself she has been scared of her whole life, because of waking up after knowing the vampire took over, surrounded by a massacre. She really has to come to terms with this other side of her nature, who she thinks of as a completely different person, monster, who shares the same body as her. This in itself is pretty awesome, but we also get to see Dory when her vampire self takes over, rather than not be aware of what happens along with her when she blacks out. This side of Dory is most definitely a vampire, and has so much hatred, but perhaps she's not the complete monster Dory imagines her to be. I will say no more.

As with all of her books, Chance has woven an intricate plot in Fury's Kiss, but I think the plot for this book is even more intricate. Perhaps I'm misremembering just how intricate they can be due to having not read any of her books for quite a while, it's possible. But if someone asked me to tell them exactly what the bad guys were doing and how, with no problem about giving spoilers, I'm not sure I could. It's so tight, and with so many players, when things were being worked out, I had to read over parts to try and keep on top of everything. It's very much involved with vampire politics, and it's so clever, but unbelievably detailed. With skills like hers, I wouldn't be surprised if Chance worked out how to break in to where ever the hell she liked. Working out strategy? Chance has got it down pat.

This, along with Chance's trademark of massive, dangerous action scene after massive, dangerous action scene, there was so much going on in this book! Chance must do some serious planning before she writes her books, because I can't see this book being written by the seat of anyone's pants. It's awesome, it's riveting, and I couldn't put the book down! The action scenes seemed to step it up a notch too, with the level of danger, violence and how-the-hell-is-Dory-going-to-get-out-of-this-one suspense! It's just beyond impressive. It's incredible.

There is one part of this book that had me literally shout out "OH MY GOD!", with a massive grin on my face and squealing with excitement! It's about half a page, if that. But it's going to have huge consequences. The repercussions are going to be so, so good! That, topped with what happened at the end of the book, has me ridiculously excited for the next installment. It's huge! It's going to ripple out and affect everything! And it will rock! Such an incredible book! I'm really excited for Tempt the Stars, the sixth book in the Cassandra Palmer series, and whatever comes next in Dory's series.

It's going to be epic.