Series Review: Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning

This is a review quite different from what we are used to, it’s about a whole series and not just one book. The reason for this is that I waited a looooooooong time to start this series, until it was finished (which is totally what I will do from now on when a series starts getting all the buzz like this one).

Anyway, I love faeries and faeries stories, and if you mix faeries with romance nothing can get in my way until I have my hand on it. Or, to be perfectly honest, the only thing that can get in my way is a cliffhanger ending, which is THE definition of this set of books. My first recommendation: if you are planning to read this series buy all the books first, otherwise the angst is going to kill you. I read the whole five books in four days which means that I didn’t work on my dissertation during those days and my sleep time was full of dark and scary shadows.

Back to the review, this series is about Mac’s (MacKayla Lane) journey to discover her sister’s murderer; what she finds instead is a world full of danger and the true about her past (and her sister’s). Mac is a sidhe-seer, meaning that she can see through the glamour and see the Fae. She discovers her “gift” in the worst way possible which forces her to work with people she doesn’t trust at all. The Fae in this series are unlike anything I have read before, they are otherworldly and they feel superior to humankind. There are no good fairies, just less evil ones, but they all want to find the instrument that will allow them to create, recreate and dominate the world.

This instrument is a book that possesses all the knowledge of the Fae but there is only one person that can feel the book and is able to trace it: you guessed it, that person is Mac and everybody wants a piece of her. There are four different types of beings looking for the book: The Seelie (least evil fairies) represented by V’lane, he is a Dead-by-Sex faery -a self-explanatory name- if he does his thing you die very happy. Then there are the Unseelie, really scary fairies that crave for the things that they cannot have, if they are not beautiful they suck the beauty from humans, if they don’t have flesh they eat everything that have it and so on, they are led by a mean character responsible for the opening of the gates between the realms, which is why there are fairies in the human world now. The third party are the sidhe-seer coalition, an ancient society that teaches and leads all the sidhe-seer in the world, but if you think that they are the only ones that Mac can trust, think again! They also have twisted intentions. And last but not least there is Jericho Barrons, we don’t know what exactly is he (you’ll have to read the series to find out). He is our hero, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that he is good and Mac can trust him, he wants the book for his personal use and he wants to control Mac to find it.

By understanding all the parts involved is easy to get the picture of Mac’s struggle. She had the perfect life, a car, a job, no pressure to finish college and a pool where she could lay all day and get tanned. Then, one awful afternoon she receives the call that will change everything: her sister has been murdered in Ireland and they are closing the case. Mac arrives in Dublin as a blonde and wearing pink; at the beginning of Darkfever (Book One) she was an annoying character, she is all the blonde jokes that you have ever heard and more. But later we discover that she uses her looks as a tool and she is not as stupid as she wants you to believe she is.

So, it’s pretty much clear that the characters in this series are multilayered. Just when you think that you have one of them completely understood, bam! They do something that is going to change your perception!. Your feelings towards each character will change, you will love them, you will hate them, and you will love them again, by the end you will feel bipolar.

The series is narrated in first person so, saving some parts, we only get her POV. I normally avoid reading this kind of books but this one is well written and enjoyable. Sometimes she will address you directly and those moments make your reading journey a blast. At one point I got so scared that I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without turning on all the lights (I read at night when everybody else is sleeping). There are funny moments that will help you relax a little but there is some serious sh%t happening too. It doesn’t have a happy start, it gets worst in the middle and it doesn’t have a real ending but what I think is more of a beginning. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the ride a lot. You won’t find romance until Dreamfever (Book Four) but there are so many things happening that you won’t miss it.

There are a couple of thing that I would have changed, Dani is a little overdone, too many dudes for my taste but I’m still dying to read her story. The things that happened to Mac are awful and I find hard to believe that she recovered so fast from them. And finally I thank God that I waited to read these books when the series was finished because those endings are the worst kind of cliff-hangers that I have ever read.

Review by Marie

Grade: Darkfever: 4

           Bloodfever: 4

           Faefever: 5

           Dreamfever: 5

           Shadowfever: 5

Sensuality: Darkfever: McSexy

                 Bloodfever: McSexy

                 Faefever: McSteamy

                 Dreamfever: McSteamy

                 Shadowfever: McSteamy

Fever Series by Karen Marie Moning  

Delacorte Press; October, 2006 to January, 2011.