Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

Urban Fantasy

Author: Karen Marie Moning
Series: Fever, #1
Publisher: Delacorte (Imprint of Random House)
Published: October 31st, 2006
Rating: ♥♥♥♥♡

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…

My Review:

So I’ve had many-a-people telling me I need to read this series. I’ve seen countless raving reviews and have been very curious about this series for awhile. I’ve had it on my tbr list since December of last year, just to give you an idea. But then new books in series I follow and entirely new series’ would pop up and I would start them instead of diving into this. It just kind of kept getting pushed to the back burner for no other reason than my own A.D.D. lol

But, I’m glad to have started this finally. I am normally not a big Fae fan, and this series is all about the Fae. But, I liked this. Maybe it’s because it seemed more paranormal than fantasy. Not sure. I liked Mac. She’s not like you’re typical UF heroine. She’s very feminine with a bubbling personality and oh-so-blonde — sort of like a Barbie doll. But, she holds her own too. Sure, she’s scared of this new world, but I think, considering all she’s going through, she handles it pretty well and so far I’m impressed by her. Her actions and the choices she makes are what I would imagine most real females would do in real life. So I gotta hand it to Moning for her character — she did a great job. In some ways she reminds me of Buffy in the early days. That’s a good thing in my opinion.

Now where I’m kind of going against the grain here is with Barrons. I’m not seeing the appeal at this point. I’m sure his character changes over time and softens up a bit perhaps, but even from some Darkfever reviews I’ve read, everyone is raving about how sexy and blah blah blah he is. I just don’t see it. In this book he comes across as just a big jerk to me. He treats Mac like she’s just this object he has conveniently found to further his own means. I hope that I come to like him in the future books, but right now I really don’t like him all that much.

I had a hard time putting this book down though, which is always a good sign for me. But despite that, I couldn’t give it five stars. I mainly couldn’t put it down because I was waiting for something to happen, not because that much exciting things where actually going on. There was a lot of world-building, and Mac is figuring out her new place in the world at this point. Which, I’m sure will later make the series all the more better, but as far as this book, it kept the action and actual excitement to a minimum.

Overall though, I really liked this book and I think it is a really solid foundation for the world and story that’s to come in the next books. What I really like is that it looks like there’s going to be an overall continuing story throughout the series. Whereas a lot of adult UF series sort of just float around from one villain to the next, I like that this seems to be heading in a definite direction. I think that will make the series all the more exciting to read. So I’m definitely looking forward to the next one and seeing where the story goes from here.

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