Review: Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning
(Fever #1)

4.5 out of 5 stars

Published by Dell

Oh, Ms. Karen Marie Moning, how could you?! How could you leave us hanging like that? How are we supposed to live without having a sense of closure after that roller coaster ride that was your book? That's just plain sadistic. No really.

When her sister is killed in Ireland, small-town Georgia girl MacKayla Lane has no peace until the murderer is found. The police decides there aren't enough leads and close the case, leaving Mac no choice but to travel to Ireland herself and convince the police to open her sister's case again. When she sets foot in Dublin, she is within days sucked into a strange world where monsters exist, and only she can see them for what they are.

I loved this book. I love the way it's constructed, the voice in which it's written. I love the world that slowly but steadily unfolds before our eyes, where more and more Unseelie Fae are entering our world through a portal, infesting our cities and killing innocent humans. The only ones that can save mankind from being overrun by these monsters are the Sidhe-seers. These humans can see through the glamour of the Fae and see the real monster within them.

The world Ms. Moning has created isn't pretty. It's dark and gruesome. You can't trust anyone. Everyone has its own hidden agenda, including the supposedly good guys. Then, you throw our pink-loving small town girl from the Deep South Barbie heroine into this mess. I don't believe there could be a bigger contrast.

I've read a lot of reviews saying they couldn't stand Barbie 'cause she's so annoyingly shallow and not-heroic. I'm not going to lie to you, she totally is both things. She has two things working for her though. One, she is still grieving the loss of her sister, her best friend. Don't tell me you wouldn't do stupid things to revenge a loved one. Two, I don't think any regular human being has world-saving ambitions. In books we see the I-have-to-save-the-world-on-my-own complex a lot, but we all know that it isn't realistic. Mac is just an ordinary girl, maybe shallow and superficial, but can you blame her for not wanting to fight monsters straight from your worst nightmare?

One thing that did annoy me about Mac was not her habit to describe every piece of her wardrobe in detail, but her awful romantic chattering about the Deep South. I know that's where she comes from, and she is apparently damn proud of it, but do you have to measure every single thing that happens to you to how different it would be if you were back at home? It seems like every single person in her home town is extremely kind, hospitable and polite. Personally, I hate small towns. The idea that everyone knows you and knows what you do every second of the damned day freaks me out. Sometimes I wanted to give Mac a nice slap to the head and tell her that not everything that's different from provincial life is a bad thing.

I would have probably given this book 5 stars, if it wasn't for the terrible cliffhanger at the end. I thoroughly hate it when a writer doesn't give you any sense of an ending. We read the whole thing, but now we are forced to buy part two of the series. Which will probably end with a cliffhanger too. That's so not cool. Problem is, I will probably buy the second part of the series, Bloodfever, very soon anyway.

Darkfever was an awesome urban-fantasy book, especially for a first book in a series. Beware of the cliffhanger ending.

Blurb

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...