BOOK REVIEW: Faefever by Karen Marie Moning

BOOK REVIEW: Faefever by Karen Marie Moning.

Gollancz
November 2011
Paperback, £7.99 GBP
Reviewed by Aly Locatelli

8.5/10

“Who the fuck are you, Ms. Lane?”
Rage filled me. Rage at what had been done to her. Rage at him for bringing it up. The thought that no one could see or judge me was liberating. I swelled with grief and anger.
“Now tell me who you are.”
“Vengeance,” I said in a cold voice.

Faefever shows just how ugly the world can be. Forget the rainbow-and-pink loving Mac who only ever wanted to meet a nice Southern gentleman, get married and have plenty of babies; forget the reluctant upgrade in Bloodfever. Faefever Mac is a beast to behold. Evil is so close, and Mac is running out of time. Soon, it’ll be flight or fight, and with careful, reluctant alliances, a cop on her tail, revenge gnawing a hole in her heart and new friends that may or may not be exactly who they say they are, Mac knows it’s every princess for herself.

Dublin is getting ugly. The Unseelie are out of their holes and taking victims right, left and centre; the Sinsar Dubh is forever on the hunt, and circling closer to home; Barrons may or may not be the enemy and Mac is more alone than ever. When she receives a page torn out of her dead sister’s journal, Mac’s need for revenge amplifies. Alina’s killer is close, and it’s her personal mission to destroy him once and for all.

I turned around slowly, and looked up at him. He stiffened and sucked in a shallow breath. After a moment, he touched my cheek.
“Such naked pain,” he whispered.
I turned my face into his palm and closed my eyes. His fingers threaded into my hair, cupped my head, and brushed the brand. It heated at his touch.
“Never show it to me again.” His face was cold, hard, his voice colder.

But Halloween approaches, and Halloween is the night when the veil between the human world and Fae world is at its thinnest. With edges of it already crumbling, Barrons flies to Scotland to help the McKeltars, a family of powerful Druids in charge with guarding the Seelie fae, to help with their ritual; Mac meets a group of sidle-seers, those that had not been hunted and killed all those years ago, and learns more about who she is and where she came from. With every chapter, we learn more and fear more for what is to come. Mac learns to trust nothing and no one, and she keeps her cards close to her chest.

“The Sinsar Dubh popped up on my radar, and it was moving straight toward us.
At an extremely high rate of speed.
I whipped the Viper around, tires smoking on the pavement. There was nothing else I could do.
Barrons looked at me sharply. “What? Do you sense it?”
Oh, how ironic, he thought I’d turned us toward it. “No,” I lied, “I just realized I forgot my spear tonight. I left it back at the bookstore. Can you believe it? I never forget my spear. I can’t imagine what I was thinking. I guess I wasn’t. I was talking to my dad while I was getting dressed and I totally spaced it.” I worked the pedals, ripping through the gears.
He didn’t even try to pat me down. He just said, “Liar.”

This book makes the series. It truly is the ugly truth of a world almost at war, of feeling helpless and alone and of not being able to trust a single soul without it coming back to bite you in the behind. By the end, it became truly terrifying. The wall is about to come down, and with it will come the ugliest, nastiest of the Unseelie race. I felt for Mac and for most of the book, all I wanted to was reach through the pages and give her a huge, rib-crushing hug. I felt for Barrons, mostly because he’s a jackass but seems to mean well most of the time. He looks after Mac, in that strange way of his, and tries to protect her — again, in a very strange way — by teaching her how to resist Voice, a power that gives the wielder complete control over another person’s body. Each character in the book has their own agenda, one they don’t want to reveal, and Mac is stuck in the middle. Who’s the ally? Who’s the enemy? What will she do?

Get ready for some tears. Faefever is as wonderful as it is brutal.

(Faefever is Book 3 in the Fever series.)

Category: Book Reviews, Other Reviews