Review: Darkfever by Karen Marie Moning

The Fever series by Karen Marie Moning caught my attention after all the Twitter conversations I caught about the newest release, Shadowfever.  Everyone was so excited about its release and talking about it for weeks, that I went back to check out a few reviews of previous installments.  In short, I decided I'd give them a try!

Synopsis:   McKayla Lane has lived a happy, carefree life until she learned that her sister had been murdered in Ireland, where she was attending school.  Grief stricken, and led by a frightening last phone message left by her sister, McKayla left for Ireland to solve her sister's mysterious death.  Once there, she quickly found that she and her sister had strange powers that allowed her to see beyond her human world into the world of the Fae.  From there her adventure took on a whole new direction, leading her into terrifying discoveries about the magical world and a strange camaraderie with a Fae man named Jericho Barrons, who just might be as likely to kill her as to help her find her sister's killer.

Review:  This first book in the Fever series is a bit action-intense, with a lot of basic information the reader needs to really grasp the world created by Moning.  Rather than really try to sort it out, I just kept reading, hoping that sooner or later I'd get the main idea behind the "Fae" world and who was good and bad.  That might have been too simple of an approach, seeing as most of the characters could have been good and bad for all we knew.  It's that limbo as readers that left me nervous for McKayla throughout much of the book.  Jericho Barrons, the guy who takes her in, is described as some type of massive male Adonis, built to protect and defend, brooding and sulking in a very manly fashion.  The thing is, in this first installment, there is little you feel you know about him, and therefore never feel certain whether he is there to help McKayla or not. 

McKayla is a quick character to get a grasp on, but I often felt like she was in so much danger from the start, that I didn't really have a chance to like her or not.  Okay, so she's our main character and I don't want to see her die at the hands of some shadow-like creature or crazy demon, but other than that, I don't know that I get her yet.   Jericho is just the brooding male figure in the story so far, and the other peripheral characters all blend in the background of what is a fast-moving story.

My thought is that this first book must be meant to give the reader a good understanding of the Fae world that Moning has set up.  This isn't a book I'd skip to move on to later installments, as I'm already part way into the second book and can see how lost you'd be without the first.  The action is crazy at times, scary at times, and even a little sad at times, but really all intriguing.  I'm one to usually get annoyed or bored with drawn out fight scenes or Paranormals galore, but these books have me intrigued and I'm going to keep reading them.  They definitely have their own unique premise on the Paranormal world!