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Cassandra "Cassie" Palmer managed to defeat a god in Curse the Dawn but her biggest trial is yet to come – she's being crowned Pythia, the supernatural world's top clairvoyant. The ceremony preparations are driving her crazy and Pritkin isn't giving her any time off from her training. Then there's the people – individually and in groups, that want to see her dead and replaced by a Pythia they can control.

More by Karen Chance: Cassie Palmer: * Touch the Dark * Claimed By Shadow * Embrace the Night * Curse the Dawn * Hunt the Moon Dorina Basarab, Dhampir: * Midnight's Daughter * Death's Mistress

Cassie falls off a mountain, gets possessed by someone or something, gets nearly drowned, gets nearly choked to death, nearly flayed by an apartment filled with whirling bits of glass, and thrown into walls – guess what, we're only up to page 23. This is a roller-coaster of a book. You barely get a spot in the story where the action isn't full-bore ahead so you can catch your breath.

Other than trying to figure out who is trying to kill her this time, Cassie wants to see her mother. Her mother was killed when Cassie was really small and she barely remembers her. She's trying to assert her independence and equality with Mircea, the vampire she's married to – sort of anyway, that's in previous books. It seems in Hunt the Moon that Cassie is always just a bit behind the curve as people try to protect her by withholding information that she needs to protect herself.

Chance has a lot going on here and yet manages to keep all the plot threads moving along and yet connected and creating a story that is multi-layered. This isn't just urban fantasy – it storytelling at its best. With characters you care about, surprises and misdirection, you get to wonder along with Cassie just where the danger is going to come from next and who is friend and who is foe. Of course there's the time traveling aspect to keep you wondering just which history lessons you zoned out in because it may be important to know what Cassie is going to run into next.

Hunt the Moon has a few surprises for the reader – as we learn more about a couple of the major characters in the series. But this is still Cassie's story and she's front and center for the entire book. She manages to keep going even with bruises and bone-deep aches because she's the only one who can do what she does and she can't let the other side win. Yes, Cassie has some powers, but she's basically as fragile as any other human. Cassie keeps going because it's the right thing to do. She may not always do the best thing but she's trying to do the right thing, and that striving is what keeps this series fresh and yet always evolving.