DARKFEVER

TITLE: DARKFEVER

AUTHOR: KAREN MARIE MONING

Pages: 347

Date: 05/11/2011

Grade: 4

Details: no. 1 Fever Series

            Reviewed for BookGeeks

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MacKayla (Mac) Lane is 22 years old and has a good life in Ashford, Georgia. Living with her parents, she has a job in a bar and studies part-time. She rarely faces more difficult decisions than what to wear today, and what colour her nails should be, with her biggest worry being that her favourite colour will be discontinued. That all changes when she receives word that her sister Alina has been murdered in Dublin, where she had been studying in Trinity College.

Devastated and heartbroken Mac travels to Ireland to find out what exactly happened to her sister, and who killed her since it seems that the local police is not getting anywhere with the investigation.

As soon as Mac arrives in Dublin her live changes. She finds that she is seeing monsters around her; monsters that other people don’t seem to be able to see. And it isn’t long before she discovers that she isn’t what or who she thought she was either.

Mac finds herself in a world where the Fae are mixing with humans, using them before killing them. And Mac is a Sidhe-seer, one of only a few who can see and recognize the Fae for what they are.

A voicemail message Alina left her, sends Mac searching for something called the Sinsar Dubh, although she has no idea what it is or why she is looking for it.

When she meets Jericho Barrons they are at odds with each other from the start. But it soon becomes apparent that if Mac wants to find her answers and to stay alive she will need Barrons. And, it turns out that Mac has certain powers that are very useful for Barrons too.

But with the Fae slowly invading Dublin and taking whole parts of the city literally off the map, Barrons and Mac are in constant danger.

In many ways this is yet another addition to the paranormal fiction that seems to be flooding the market at the moment. We have a heroine who is, on the surface, completely unsuited to the task she has been set, forced to work together with a dangerous and potentially untrustworthy ally who also happens to be attractive. Throw in opponents who are not from this world and can appear both monstrous and gorgeous but are deadly in both guises and you can’t help feeling that you’ve been there before.

However, this is also a very enjoyable read. Mac is a mostly interesting main character and it’s nice to see her growing into something more than the super visual girl she starts of as.

For me personally the fact that the story is set in Dublin added a lot to the attraction because I know the places the story was taking place in.

At times the contrast between Mac’s innocence and Barrons’ selfish cynicism seemed a bit too much like a stereotype to me, but overall I got hooked into the story and found myself compulsively turning the pages, wanting to find out what would happen next.

And books that come with sentences like: “I love books, by the way, way more than movies. Movies tell you what to think. A good book lets you choose a few thoughts for yourself. (…) My imagination has always topped anything a movie could come up with” can’t be all bad.

I’ve got a feeling that I will probably read the sequels to this book, if only to find out where else in Ireland this story will take Mac and the reader.