Review: 4.5 stars - Mircea's beginnings
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 03 23, 2014
Mircea Basarab, the powerful vampire senator, has been a character in both Karen Chance's Cassie Palmer and Dorina Basarab series, but in Masks we get a peek into the early days of the much younger Mircea.Unlike many of his kind, Mircea was cursed to walk the night instead of turned, so masterless he headed to the only territory in Europe that allowed the masterless or outcast, Vienna. But Mircea quickly learns that Vienna is not the promised haven for the powerless 'young' vamps like him and ends up in prison and then sold as slave into a high class brothel.  When the Convocation of Vampire Senators comes to Vienna it is opportunity for his 'employer' to curry favor and Mircea, is plucked, polished, outfitted and is provided for the amusement of a powerful Senator.  However when he gets wind of a vampire plot that is destined to change the face of the Senate, the blood of his lineage will tell, as will his training as soldier and prince, and despite the powerlessness of his current situation, Mircea can not help but act.I haven't necessarily been team Mircea, while reading the Cassie books, but Masks - which only touches upon a brief period of his history - made me want more of his history and rise to the Senate. If any of that is as interesting as this episode, I think Chance could do a whole Mircea series and I would read it.  I really enjoyed seeing how this story shaped his future, even as he is in a situation that doesn't allow him much power, he makes decisions about 'who' he will be in his new vampiric life.  As a warning though, since Mircea is sold to be a high class whore, there are several scenes in the story which are not exactly about sex but about Mircea being subjected to other vampire's power and that power is exercised in a sexual way - he does choose to accept those situations but the scenes are explicit.So, after reading Masks I am a bigger Mircea fan than before and I can see why Chance wasn't able to fit this story into a shorter format and why her publisher definitely wanted to claim the rights to this novella -hope they ask her to write more.