Karen Chance Fans discussion
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Time Twists the Plot...
Mel wrote: "It does ring a bell. I think you're right! So many real life cameos. So far (not counting the Basarabs, LC or Myrdin): Oscar Wilde, Jim Morrison, Elvis, Cleopatra, Marc Anthony, Shakespeare, Bram..."
I don't remember where some of these showed up.
Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison were ghost in Père Lachaise in EtN (although never directly named), Elvis was a zombie in CbS, Cleopatra and Mark Anthony are the North American and European Consuls, Shakespeare is never really in the books, just mentioned as being a cover for Marlowe to still wite plays after he was turned, Bram Stoker worked at the theatre, served Dracula, and got possessed by Chavez in CbS, Rafael is Rafe, and Jack is Jack the Ripper :)
Wait Cleopatra is our consul? Meaning Cleopatra = snakey consul?
Zeenat wrote:"Wait Cleopatra is our consul? Meaning Cleopatra = snakey consul?"Yeah, it's never directly stated but there are hints in the books.
I thought she would be Medusa cause of the snakes lol.
Did you not realise that, Zeenat?? Oh god, I just assumed everyone knew that LOL! (Sorry, not laughing at you.) I guess we shouldn't take anything for granted.
I thought it was made clear in the first book when Cassie first sees the consul and Raph whispers "It wasn't an asp that bit her".
Heh, I didn't make the connection! Funny how I overanalyze everything, but I miss historical cues a lot. I'm always looking for sneakiness from the authors. LOL
I know, you of all people should have picked that up! :D
I'll admit, I didn't pick up on that the first time I read TtD either. I'd forgotten how Cleopatra died. But something about that line was bugging me when I reread it, so I googled historical figures who'd been bitten by an asp :) It made reading the Shakespeare play pretty funny :D
Lately, when I think about the Consul, I think about how Dory described her in Death's Mistress. I looked up the quote:Her skin was papery, almost scaly, and finely abrasive. I could almost feel my own skin crawling up my face, trying to get away from that inhuman touch.I always take Snakey and Anthony (of the European Senate) to be contemporaries and roughly equal in power. Yet Anthony seems so ... normal. He likes to drink and party and hang out with loose women. OK I know he's a schemer like the rest of them, but he doesn't seem like a reptile! It's odd how the two of them are so different. Even sadistic and power-hungry Ming-de still feels human, albeit a fairly unpleasant one.
Yeah, I know what you mean. Theoretically I know Cleopatra and Anthony and on about the same power level (or at least I assume so), but our Consul has always felt the part of scary manipulative ruler of a continent of vampires much more than Anthony ever has. I'm guessing Anthony must be hiding it quite a bit, but Cleo (god it feels weird calling her that, but I'm being lazy) seems so much more of a strong, badass and compelling leader. I can see why KC has written it that way - I guess to make it more understandable why she's the one who's leading the other five senates in the war. Although Ming De is still pretty impressive, and Hassani sounded very creepy and inhuman, so I doubt she's in the lead by much, if any. But I can definitely see her being in charge over Anthony.
Maybe the Consul has really dry skin? :P
Yeah, she really ought to moisturise :D
I think it's the way the Consul seems to be evolving into ... something else. I remember this question from a Q&A (amazingly, this was my question, which is why I remember the answer):Q. Has Marlowe’s relationship with The Consul ever been more than strictly business?
A. Lol. First you want him with dudes and now with…whatever she is these days. You guys need to make up your minds.
It's how KC said "whatever she is these days" makes me think that she's not quite human any more. Anthony and Ming-de might be overloaded with power, but they still feel human.
But, yeah, maybe some nice moisturiser is all she needs LOL!
Maybe she doesn't have time anymore to spend hours soaked in milk baths like used to in old Egypt.
LMAO!! I think you've nailed the problem, Missdevora! More milk for the Consul please!
Huh, I'd never actually picked up on that before. Most interesting :PBut perhaps she's already having milk baths, but with snake milk, and it's slowly transforming her in to one of them?!?!?!? :D
LOL'ing at snake milk. I think you'd need a lot of snakes to have a bath!I guess the ability to transform into snakes was one of the Consul's first-level master superpowers, and she's getting more and more of an affinity with them as the centuries roll by (possibly at the expense of her humanity).
Given that Mircea's ability is a mentalist, does that mean in 2000 years he might turn into a giant head?? :D
Well, the Consul does have a lot of snakes...so maybe she can have a monthly snake milk beauty bath?Oh, no! Please no! Mircea does have a beautiful face and his mind is spectacular...but NO...I cannot imagine only a giant floating head.
Ah, and he loves his body too much to leave it behind :)
@Lannister: I read your comment and died laughing. Tried to explain it to the roommates but they just didn't understand.
You need to convert your roommates, Claire! :DI picture an ancient Mircea with a huge head and a tiny little body, like a chibi character.
Dory would probably say he's there already :P
Lannister wrote: "LOL'ing at snake milk. I think you'd need a lot of snakes to have a bath!"
But she does have a lot of snakes! A whole wardrobe-full of them, in fact :D
Ahahaha, I so nearly sprayed drink all over my keyboard from laughing when I read the head bit.
Oh, ick, it's just too gross to think of a snake milk bath....
Lannister wrote: "You need to convert your roommates, Claire! :DI picture an ancient Mircea with a huge head and a tiny little body, like a chibi character."
I got my best friend to start the series. Unfortunately, she didn't really like TtD, and I'm having a hard time convincing her to continue.
Maybe give her a dory book. A lot of people like those over the cassie books.
Yeah, I really wasn't too keen on TtD, and wasn't sure about going on an reading the rest of the series. The Cassie series slowly improves, but the Dory series starts off much better :)
Yeah, a lot of people aren't so keen on Touch the Dark cos there is a LOT of info-dumping. It's not so bad when you read it the second time, but I can understand why some people get put off. I do think KC gets better as a writer with every book, and it shows with the Dory series. She already had about three books under her belt by the time Midnight's Daughter came out, and you can see how much better a writer she's become by that point.
Is Touch the Dark her first "real" book? in hindsight, it wasn't the best written book (but I enjoyed it too much to care lol). But her writing got better exponentially I think...
I believe it was her first book, Zeenat. I think KC creates great characters and, for me, a book will stand or fall on its characters (unless the plot is ridiculous.) So whilst there was a lot of exposition in TtD, you could see that there was great potential and the characters were interesting, funny and sexy. I'm as guilty as anyone of writing a series off because the first book didn't grab me, and I know I shouldn't. I think you've got to give an author at least two books to see if they improve, because a lot of them do.
Yeah, I tried to tell her that. She really hated Pritkin initially, but she'd already started to soften towards him slightly when he was ready to sacrifice himself at the end. But mostly she said she liked Pritkin a bit more because of how much of a douche Thomas was. I'm amused.Kassie (my best friend) said that the flashbacks and time travel scenes were really confusing for her and hard to keep up with. So yeah, KC establishing her world made the book a bit tough to understand at first. I'm really hoping Kass stays interested enough to get to book three.
yeah, I try telling that to people all the time, especially for series like teh cassie books, toby daye, hollows... you have to read at least the first two, maybe even 3 books...
Yeah, a good and complex series has to establish the world and that can take up a bit of the first book. I didn't notice the info-dumping because I was so into the book. If there are good characters and plot I get hooked. So then I flew through the next few books and don't even remember info-dumping. Dory does start out stronger because she improved her writing but I still didn't like it as much. I like them, I just don't find Dory as interesting. I think it's because she is more the typical UF heroine and Cassie is more unique. Cassie learning and growing adds dimension too.
Sarah wrote: "Yeah, a good and complex series has to establish the world and that can take up a bit of the first book. I didn't notice the info-dumping because I was so into the book. If there are good character..."lol yay! I'm not the only one :)
Zeenat wrote: "Sarah wrote: "Yeah, a good and complex series has to establish the world and that can take up a bit of the first book. I didn't notice the info-dumping because I was so into the book. If there are ..."I'm with you guys. I hadn't noticed the info dumps as I was too involved in finding out what happened next!
Kathy wrote: "Zeenat wrote: "Sarah wrote: "Yeah, a good and complex series has to establish the world and that can take up a bit of the first book. I didn't notice the info-dumping because I was so into the book..."Same thing happened to me, and if I don't like or understand a particulary paragraph or page I go on and on cause I know that at the end I'll undersand it!
I really didn't notice how complicated the first Cassie books were. I bought the first two together and read them both quickly.
I remember being slightly confused about the Francoise/LC timeline first time I read the books. With all the different visits to Carcassonne, I think I mixed myself up over what actually happened and what got changed. One minute Francoise was being burned alive and I thought she was LC's bit on the side, then Cassie helped her escape the dungeon, then she popped up in a car park at Dante's AND in Faerie. There sure was a lot going on!And when reading Touch the Dark, never in a million years did I think that Radu would become a favourite!
It was a bit confusing. But I liked it enough to continue
I didn't really find it confusing, but I did notice that it got pretty heavy on the details at times. Cassie was explaining so much about her backstory with Tony at the start that I thought there must have been a previous book that this all happened in, and this was a sequel that was bringing you up to speed with previous events because there was so much :D
Hey, wouldn't it be cool if KC wrote a prequel about Cassie's time at Tony's! Maybe we'll get a little bit of this in Tempt the Stars if Cassie's going back to nick that paperweight (at least, if we're correct in our theorizing that she's going to go back to Tony's).I believe I thought Tomas was going to be a much bigger factor in Cassie's life when I first read Touch the Dark. It's hard to remember now, but I think early on in the book I thought the love triangle would be between him and Mircea, not Pritkin. I still kinda wish Tomas hadn't faded out the story completely.
It's very weird, thinking back on what a big part Thomas played. I haven't read the first 2 books in a long time so I almost forgot he existed. I never really liked him though, so I can't say I'm sorry that he faded out.
I felt Tomas had a lot of potential but then he screwed up and got left in Faerie as punishment. I don't feel like we ever really got to know him as well as we might. I did like him in his short story. I thought he was a good guy for not automatically seizing power at the South American Senate, like practically every other vamp would have.I do think he's a little naive or maybe even out and out gullible for trusting Rasputin and Tony in Touch the Dark, but for all we know Rasputin used a little mental coercion to 'persuade' him over to their side.
Meh, I was never too fussed with Tomas either. He added some interesting aspects to the plot, but I never really liked him in his short story - he seemed to go straight from Cassie to 'ooh, new girl that I've only known for about three hours to be convinced I'm in love with'. And whilst It's good that he's not power-hungry, it kind of pissed me off that he didn't seize control of the latin-american senate - he could have done something good with that and tried to stop them from being quite so massive sadistic arseholes.But I'd never though of Rasputin using mental powers on him. I like this theory :) Wait, was Rasputin a mentalist? I don't think he was, was he? And didn't they only ever talk over the phone?
I agree, Somnium, that I would have loved to see Tomas seize control in South America. It could have set up some really interesting storylines, given the current state of his relationship with the North American Senate. But I question whether he could have held onto the seat. I know LC is powerful, but I don't get the impression that he's off-the-scale powerful compared to some of the other first level masters. Tomas seems much less powerful than LC, since LC was able to force him to his will. There must be other first-level masters in the world who are on the same level as LC (or close) who could challenge and defeat him. Even if they were already senators somewhere else, they might fancy being a Consul and running their own Senate. I don't think Tomas would last, and possibly he knew that in the back of his mind.I have no idea if Rasputin was a mentalist. I just threw that out there! :) KC said in a recent Q & A that Mircea could defeat him mentally, but I suppose that doesn't rule out Rasputin have some sort of mental powers. I'm not certain if he and Tomas met in person or not. I guess I'm trying to find some sort of justification for Tomas's behaviour that doesn't involve him being a complete idiot!! :D
@Lannister Or maybe the point was to show how insanely powerful LC is, that he could hold Thomas in thrall
I don't know if LC is insanely powerful. Yeah, of course he's very powerful compared to most vampires, but I don't know if he's more powerful than, say, Mircea. KC talked about that recently, and I don't think it's that one is way more powerful than the other, so much as that they have different skills and they are masterful at what they do (e.g. Mircea's mental abilities and LC's fighting skill). But I don't know if one outranks the other in terms of pure megawatts of power. Even KC didn't give a definitive answer as to who would win in her Q & A. What's certain is that they both could squash Tomas LOL!
I suppose Mircea diverting some of his power to protect Dory when she was younger is broadly similar to LC, though I doubt it needed anywhere near as much power as actually keeping someone in thrall.
I'd love to know where everyone stood in the pecking order but, apart from the Consuls, I thought the senators were probably broadly similar in power levels but they'd bring their own unique talents to the job.
Okay, fair point, Tomas probably wouldn't be able to keep the position of Consul. But still. I guess I'm just not really a fan, and looking for reasons to criticise him.I always thought senators were similar in power at first, but since Death's Mistress, I got the feeling there was a much wider spectrum of power levels - like wasn't Elyas meant to be pretty weak for a senator?
Edited: Yes. Oscar Wilde. He a..."
I was born in '81 and I know Jim Morrison. The Doors were awesome.