Bloodfever by Karen Marie Moning

Genre: Urban Fantasy

Pages: 337

Copyright: 2007

Rating:

Wow! I think this has now become my favourite urban fantasy series!!! Not since Twilight have I read a series that has had me thinking about the characters so obsessively I've dreamt about them. Karen refers to her fans as 'Moning Maniacs'...well I guess I'm one now too.

One of the things that makes this series so exciting to read is that there are no real 'good guys'. As a reader, who are we to root for? Who are we to trust? I know who I want to trust (*cough* Barrons), who I want to believe in (*cough* Barrons) but the author deliberately does not give me enough hard evidence to decide whether this is unfounded or naive. Every time you think you have it figured it out, the game changes again. Nobody's motivations were revealed and readers are kept excruciatingly on the edge of their seats trying to work them out. MacKayla aside, out of all these players, who really will use the Sinsar Dubh (pronounced she-sa doo)for good instead of evil? Will anyone be able to save the world from the Unseelie? This is a solid, well-crafted plot that will have you eagerly turning pages.

However the tension created by the plotline is nothing compared to the tension between Mac and Barrons. Talk about a sexual inferno! Part of me wished this was a full-blown romance novel just so I could read 100 pages of those two tearing the clothes off each other. Moning has referred to this series as a whole as a romantic urban fantasy and has indicated that MacKayla will get her happily ever after. However, it's probably a fair way off yet because at this stage, Barrons hasn't even admitted how he feels about Mac. Instead, he uses anger and sexuality to mask his feelings for her:

His hand was on my throat, and he was crushing me back with his body into the cold steel beam behind me.

'Yes, I have loved, Ms Lane, and although it is none of your business, I have lost. Many things. And no, I am not like any other player in this game and I will never be like V'lane, and I get a hard-on a great deal more often than occasionally.' He leaned fully against me and I gasped. 'Sometimes, it's over a spoiled little girl, not a woman at all. And yes I trashed the bookstore when I couldn't find you. You'll have to choose a new bedroom, too. And I'm sorry your pretty little world got screwed up, but, everybody does and you go on. It's how you go on that defines you.

Page 193

And then other times, he plainly shows that he cares but stops short of verbalising it:

His face was in my neck and he was breathing hard. Was he grieving me? Already? Would he miss me? Had I, in some tiny way, come to matter to this enigmatic, hard, brilliant, obsessed man? I realised he'd come to matter to me. Good or evil, right or wrong, he mattered to me...

He raised his head. His face was all harsh planes and angles in the torchlight, his expression bleak. His eyes were dark windows on a bottomless abyss.

'I'm sorry, Mac.'

'Not your...fault,' I managed to get out.

'My fault in more ways than you could possibly know, woman.'

Woman, he called me. I'd grown up in his eyes. I wondered what he'd think of me soon.

Page 286

This guy must have some serious history, be seriously damaged to not sweep MacKayla off her feet. Instead I get the picture he's holding her at arms length to protect her, to stop her emotions from making her vulnerable. I swear if he doesn't turn out to be the good guy, I will cry. Loudly. If he does turn out to be the good guy, he might just end up being my favourite hero of all-time.

Bloodfever works so well as a follow-up novel because it asks as many questions as it answers and propels the reader through the pages at break-neck speed. Readers of Darkfever will be left wanting, begging, craving more. So my only advice here is to make sure you've got book 3, Faefever, lined up and ready to go!

The best part of all of this is that you can try out the Darkfever series for free via an audio podcast. I think most urban fantasy fans would be sucked in after listening to just two chapters of this. Check out the link here or press play on the widget inserted into the sidebar on the left-hand side of this page.

Click the cover below to read my review of Darkfever:

Darkfever is the first in a series of five novels by New York Times Bestselling author, Karen Marie Moning.

The fourth novel in this series, Dreamfever, is due for release in the US on 18th August 2009.