Darkfever (Fever book 1)

Darkfever: The Fever Series (Book 1) by Karen Marie Moning

Goodreads Product Description 
MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman.

Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands….

Review
Here I go, throwing myself into yet another series in which the books can not stand alone!!  Which I guess is the point in a book series, but the conclusion of this book was especially evil because, by the end, nothing had been resolved and it left the reader with a million questions.  Luckily I didn’t pick these books until recently, sent to me by my dear D30…er…31S, Barbara, but still I think I would have pulled my hair out or, more likely, given up on the series if I’d had to wait in between book releases.

Now that I have finished Book 1, I can easily pick up the next, not that I’m that tempted to do so.  I know I’m not making much sense, but the abrupt way the book ended really pissed me off and left me totally confused, thinking WTF? No she didn’t!

From the beginning of the story, I had trouble getting into Mac, the heroine of the Fever series, because, typical Southern girl persona aside, she was too characteristic of another Southern belle I know, Sookie Stackhouse.  And how could she not? Mac is a bartender from Georgia with blond hair, big boobs, and polite manners, if you can ignore how many times she raves about how beautiful she is.  So my first thought was, I don’t need another Sookie in my life!

Yet, I kept reading, and I’m glad I did.  I haven’t read many books about Fae, so the concept behind this book, the war against the Seelie and Unseelie courts was very interesting to me.  I enjoyed reading about new terms and mythology I didn’t know about the Fae; I felt just as naive as Mac as she learned about what she really was, a Sidhe-Seer: a person Fae magic does not work on.  As Mac traveled to Dublin to investigate her sister’s murder, only to find herself in not only in an unfamiliar country, but facing off with a different world, I found myself getting involved in the story.   

I will say the book hit a couple of bumps on the way… like a Death-by-Sex Fae but no sex… really?, and feeling like I was in Mac’s head way too much.  This was yet another book in which the book’s narrator talks to the reader.  Agh!  But Jericho Barrons, the mysterious stranger that helps Mac along on her new adventure, was a character I certainly could sink my teeth into.  He was clever, dark, and sexy.  And while he certainly could put Mac in her place with his snide remarks, he seemed to genuinely care keeping her safe.   He alone has me looking forward to reading the next book!

So yeah, this book was all over the place, just like my thoughts on it.  But it is a highly recommended series, so I’m hoping it will get better!       

Best quote EVER, said by a man, Jericho Barrons, but written by a woman, no doubt:

Barrons laughed again. “And there, my dear Fio, you make one of Womankind’s greatest mistakes: falling in love with a man’s potential. We so rarely share the same view of it, and even more rarely care to achieve it.

Now there’s a “you had me a hello” if I ever saw one. *snorts*

Another version of the book cover, which suggests erotic romance, but sadly there is no nookie in book 1.

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Posted at 9:33 pm  •  Labels: 2010, 3 stars, Book Review, Faeries, Fever Series, Karen Marie Moning, Kindle Edition, urban fantasy