Touch the Dark

Fun series that gets better with each book!

Any additional comments?

It took me a while to warm up to this book but now I have read the entire series several times. There is much detail and complexity and a number of intriguing characters. That is good because I will enjoy reading the series many times. Who wants to spend this much money on an audio book and only read it once because the plot is so shallow?

Touch the Dark introduces Cassie, a young clairvoyant, who was raised by the vampire mob who murdered her parents. She manages to escape after attempting to avenge her parents death and lives each day in fear of being recaptured.

The vampire mafioso is not the only one searching for Cassie, though. The vampire Senate, the Silver Circle of mages and the Dark Circle of mages are among those who have an interest in finding her. There is a war brewing in the supernatural world and everyone is looking for powerful allies.

It seems that Cassie is a contender to become the next Pythia, the world's most powerful seer. There are those who want to kill her and those who want to control her. And those who try to change the future by going back through time and altering the past.

Cassie must grow up fast and figure out who she can trust if she wants to survive.

Touch the Dark is a little darker than later books and spends more time on world building details. It is still a good read, though, especially the second time around when you know what is going on and can enjoy the details. The books include a lot of time travel, and you find yourself scratching your head because something doesn't make sense. That is because you don't know about something that hasn't happened yet and may not happen until a future book. Get it? You will after you read the series a second time.

I really like the narrator. She does a great job of portraying a tough young woman raised by gangsta vamps. In later books she does an awesome job making me laugh out loud at the funny parts. Mircea is sexy and seductive, Pritkin is sneering and bitchy and Billy is ...well just Billy. Cynthia Holloway doesn't do deep male voices but manages to portray their character effectively anyway.

If you like this series, there is a fun companion series ("Midnight's Daughter") set in the same world and taking place at the same time. It provides a lot of background information and understanding about Mircea and his family and the kind of man he is. It fills in the blanks about why he behaves certain ways and is so protective of Cassie.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

decent story but does have a few flaws..

Ok first off one thing i realize looking back after listening to the WHOLE audio book is the narrator does have more variation in her tone of voice the further you get into the book. I didnt like that the story seems to start off in the middle of things and takes AGES to get around to explaining even the tiniest bit of the main characters background and why she is in the middle of running from assassins when the book opens. from there it does turn into a pretty good story apart from the fact that it is VERY choppy. I hope that this author learned how to write things more smoothly in the following books... ( for instance an "intimate" scene in the book where the characters are in bed in the middle of arousing each other and then she throws in a LONG discussion between them that really wouldnt be conducive to that kind of mood... and then after a talk that would have taken quite a while they suddenly remember what they were doing and resume? or out takes in the middle of fights too.. .. the other BIG thing that kept me from giving it a higher rating is the narrator has a problem with mispronunciation. Especially with words like werewolves or wererats she pronounces it weerwolves.

6 of 6 people found this review helpful

Head Spinning

This is a busy, busy book. The world the author spins is entrancing, but there is a lot going on at all times. If Cassandra was a real woman, she would have collapsed from exhaustion before the halfway point of this book! Take a break girl, have a coffee, kiss a boy, take a darn nap! It can be hard to follow, but by the end I was caught up. It's a good story and seems well thought out over all. The narrator, who I've heard doing other books, is really slow on this one, I actually sped the timing up 15% and it made it easier to listen to her. It ends on a cliff hanger, so I will be going forward. I just wish there was less action and more meat of the story was explained, there are some large plot holes I am not over thinking, just trying to enjoy the tale.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Average listen

There were definitely good and bad parts to this story. It took me quite a while to adjust to this reader, she was probably not the best choice for the voices of the vampires. The story itself was a bit slow in spots, not sure I buy the story lines and found myself trying to figure out how the characters interacted. I think there could've been a chunk removed from the story and nothing would've been missed. "Love" scene was cheesy and ridiculous.

7 of 8 people found this review helpful

On and on and on with no point....OMG so ANNOYING

I can't believe all the positive reviews this book received. The main character is so incredibly annoying. She just goes off on these rants for no apparent reason and the story is so slow and boring that by the time the action starts I just don't even care anymore.
I don't get it, there must be something wrong with me because I hated this book. Too many boring details and the characters getting "lost in the weeds" somewhere. The only character I liked was Tomas and I have no idea why the author even wrote him in the story. He could have been a great hero/love interest but he was just never developed. What was the point?
I didn't care for the narrator either, but the story was just so bad it really didn't matter.

In my opinion I would avoid this book - don't waste your time, money or credits.

25 of 31 people found this review helpful

Ok, but lacking....

The story was slow and lacking. More action; I think, could have used a lot of more action points to give us more of a thrill, but it wasn't bad overall.

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Plot okay, Narrator is just too much

I downloaded this selection after having 2 week without a book to listen to. This is a long time for me because I use the books to help with my commute. Sorry to ramble, but the reason I go into this is because I read the reviews of several books and this seemed to be my best bet. The story itself is actually okay, even good in some parts (not rocket science, but passes the time in my car pretty well) however - the Narrator is way toooo slow and overly dramatic with passages. I had to turn the story off several times because her style of reading gave me a headache. And man, SHE IS SLOW. I did read one reviewer who gave it only 1 star. So I was forwarned...but hey author...if you want us to listen to the other books..please get a new reader...I actually daydreamed several times during the story and lost the plot a couple of times. My final thoughts are "does every author have to create their own version of what a mythical creature is...do we lack so much in creativity that the only way to have a story is to bury it in confusing hierarchial structures with convuluted rules that the main character always breaks anyway, surprise, surprise. I am getting tired of picking up new books hoping for interesting plots ex. Laurell Hamilton's early books for Anita Blake only to have 1/2 of the book be about what the HE*L their version of vampire, werewolf, witch..whatever...at least with Kim Harrisons books she doesn't try to give you ALL the information in 300 pages..you have to read several books to gradually be pulled in, not inundated with all kinds of rules, magic crap that you don't understand and doesn't always add to the story? SOrry, just venting a little. This story is okay, but not great. Would have given it 3 stars if the narrator wasn't so annoying.

18 of 24 people found this review helpful

Do Not Want

This has got to be the worst book I've ever read. The writing is juvenile at best, the plot is convoluted and contrived, and the characterization is so shallow it's laughable. The main character of the story spends the entire book a helpless, clueless figure that you just end up hating. Come on lady, get a freaking clue! Whole narrations could have been skipped if she had had at least some sort of intelligence. Instead, the writer acts like every plot revelation wasn't already predicted for several chapters, and takes hours to tell us something we already figured out and the main character should have as well.

Setting aside the barrage of various supernatural aspects to this story the reader has to contend with and the use of historical figures as prominent characters, the writer's understanding of dramatic timing is absent. You don't interrupt a dramatic fight scene to go into narration about the nuances of various supernatural entities. If you must, then you've failed as a storyteller. Couple all this with horrible dialogue and I was begging that the story just end, though I listened to the entire thing just to give the author the benefit of the doubt. Seriously, do not buy this book.

As far as the narration, I have a suggestion. Not every line of a book needs to be read with sultry intonations or biting sarcasm. Just read the book. Stop trying to make everything sound so much more important than we've already gathered is not. I will probably avoid any book narrated by her in the future.

Again, don't bother with this book. I didn't enjoy a single minute of it, and I hope to help someone else avoid wasting their money.

18 of 24 people found this review helpful

My Ears are Burning

This book is great if you like horror, fantasy, thrillers, history, and erotica all rolled into one. I think the only genre this book wouldn't fit in is mythology. The narrator is perfect, her male characters sound a little wimpy/girly but the main character sounds just as I imagined. If your one to blush I do not recommend listening to this book in public. Worth a credit anyway, hope audible gets the rest of the series soon.

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

I'm only half way through . . .

but I really can't stand Cynthia Holloway. Her mispronunciations are so jarring it's hard to concentrate. I don't know if this is a good book or a bad book. I do know that she has a tin ear for accents -- she should have just read the story instead of mangling the french and italian accents of the characters. I don't know how much choice an author has in who reads their work, perhaps none, but Holloway gets way more work than she deserves. She also savages the Chicagoland Vampire books pretty badly. Tedious and annoying is the only way to describe her reading -- not her voice, which is pleasant, but the girl needs a 'word a day' dictionary so she can improve her vocabulary -- and she should never, EVER do accents again.

12 of 16 people found this review helpful