Holy Moly, MacKayla Lane!

This is not a review per se, just a bunch of ramblings about my love of everything Fever series.  I had never read a Karen Marie Moning book, but knew that she wrote the Highlander series.  My mother, I believe, adores that series.  She likes the time-traveling books, I'm okay with them, but I prefer urban fantasy in the now.  I believe I first heard of the Fever series by my friend Kenda.  When we were huge into our Black Dagger Brotherhood phase.  So I went to the library and lo and behold, they had the first book there!

Darkfever was book one.  My love of all things Ireland really cemented that I would love this book.  I'd been to the bars and Trinity.  I fell in love with Dublin Castle.  So I could picture the City Centre perfectly well.  I knew the city so I could fall in love with city along with MacKayla Lane.  However, she's there because she needs to find out who killed her beloved sister.  What she finds out when she arrives in Dublin is more amazing and utterly believable.  The Irish are so into their lore and being so rich in history, Moning's story just hit the right note for me.

I adored the characters and boy are there a cast of them.  Jericho Barrons, the inimitable owner of Barrons Books and Baubles.  How can you not love the name.  Oh, his middle initial? Z.  Love! His stuffiness and total respect of MacKayla (she is Ms. Lane to him) is endearing.  Although the heat between Mac and Barrons is palpable.  He walks into a room and you know that Mac wants to rip her clothes off and fling herself at him.

But she has V'Lane for that.  He is Death-by-Sex fae and he turns it on whenever he wants to.  Mac will strip in the middle of the street for V'Lane.  She will do things in front of people that most people won't do behind closed doors!

And this brings us to book two.  Thankfully, both books were out when I started reading them.  It would suck that I would have to wait for book three.  The first three books were produced in Mass Market Paperback, so for a couple of dollars, I could run to the local store or supermarket to pick them up.   But I got the first two at the library.  I'm not sure about the third book, I might have that one here.  I'll have to check.

We still have no clue how or why Alina Lane died, but we know that Mac is important in finding a very old book called the sinsar dubh.  Barrons wants it, and he will go to the very extremes to get it and it seems as if Mac is the only person who can track it.  Whenever she comes into contact with it, she gets physically ill.  Kinda reminds me of the original Buffy where if a vampire was around she'd get all crampy in the mid region.  Vampires suck if they make you have period cramps!

By the time we get to book three, we know that Halloween is going to be the day when the Seelie and Unseelie will roam the earth and war will break out.  If the walls crash, people will die and the world will never be the same.  It must come to Mac and Barrons to see that the walls stay up.  But the sinsar dubh is playing with them.  It's trying to get a taste of Mac and won't stay in one place for them to grab it.  This is a book with a mind of it's own.  We learn more about the history between the Seelie and the Unseelie.

We also see more of a playful manner with Barrons.  He's enamored with Mac.  We already know that Mac would drop everything for Barrons.  But she would also betray him in a heartbeat, as would he.

This was a difficult book, Book four.  MacKayla is now pri-ya. A mortal who has been sexually enslaved by Unseelie Princes.  It takes Jericho Barrons to go to the depths of where she's is to bring her to forefront.  Can't really say how, but it's good.  The walls have crashed on Halloween and the world is destroyed.  MacKayla has met the Lord Master who Alina was in love with.  He is the one who set the wheels in motion for what happened to Mac, and she will do anything for revenge.

After book four.  We had a about an eighteen month wait for the last and final book in the Fever series.  Shadowfever was released on January 18, 2011.  I made sure I got my copy that day.  And if I could just say, the cover is absolutely brilliant.  It won't do it justice by posting it here, but if you go to a bookstore, you must look at it.  It's absolutely gorgeous.

Here is where Mac's story ends.  I finally finished it this morning/afternoon and as with all great books and series, I have this come-down period where I have to obsess over everything discuss it ad nauseum.  This is a huge book, and now I can see why it took forever to write it.  It was perfect, there were surprises that I totally wasn't expecting and I kept saying, yep, yep, yep, only for Moning to turn around and make me think something different!  This book may not be for everyone, but really enjoyed the whole lore that Moning created and she even intertwined her Highlander series with it in a seamless fashion.  I hate when a good series ends.  It's so depressing.

You can check out extras on Karen Marie Moning's Website.  If you haven't read the books, give them a chance, it's a great story and you'll find yourself rooting for Mac.