My Book Rating System

My book rating system is based on 5 stars. The book must be rated at least 3 stars for a review.

3 Stars: Good story, good plot, good writing.

4 Stars: I was wowed, but something about the story fell short of perfection.

5 Stars: I was either drooling, on the edge of my seat, or falling in love.

If you would like me to review your book, please contact me at 00ibitz@charter.net.

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Book Review: Faefever (Fever #3), by Karen Marie Moning

Faefever
Karen Marie Moning

I stood, crammed the page back in
my pocket,and pruned my dark thoughts in
the seedling stage before they could sprout.
Depression gets you nowhere but tangled in
the overgrown garden that can choke the life out of you.


Sometimes you go back and read a word, a phrase, a sentence, a paragraph, just for the clever beauty of it. Not because a sentence is tripping over itself to get its point across, or because you're lost in the point, or sometimes sentences are tossed out there with no point at all. Sometimes they're just so fecking clever, you want to read them again.

Now we're talking.

We're back to the streets of Dublin, where Mac is close to the Evil Book Thing that everyone wants. Because Mac has stuck her big toe in the dark side, she can now get close to the Evil Book Thing without completely passing out. She knows where the Evil Book Thing is, she knows who her sister's murderer is, she has new friends and new enemies, and the clock is ticking before the dark fae try to bring the walls between Mac's world and fae world down.

Like I said, now we're talking.

Unlike books 1 and 2, there wasn't a lot of mundane talk and page-filling slice-o-life-who-gives-a-fart-what's-the-point fillers...we are into the action. It starts from the beginning and takes you all the way to the end.

Oh, the end. I'll get to that in a minute.

Two Macs are battling to win the war against the fae; we want dark Mac to take control and kick some ass...and she does so nicely with a new ally by her side. She's keeping her options open; she has Plan Bs and Plan Cs. She's prepared and ready for the final battle to keep those dang walls up come Halloween, when the walls are at their weakest and the dark fae are ready to take 'em down.

And then all Hell break's loose.

There's betrayal.

There's death.

And then there's Mac, caught in the thick of it with no place to escape to. It's looking very bad for Mac. And the end...

Let's just say that while Mac is physically brutalized at the end of book 2, at the end of book 3 she's physicially, mentally, and emotionally brutalized. She's been broken. And I mean broken. One of my complaints about this series is sometimes the lack of detail, especially those climatic end-points where there's a battle, or fight, or something, and the author kindly skips those details because it's not lady-like or something. Lady-like, shmady-like. To me that's either a case of cowardice or lack of imagination. At least give one detail about what's going on. It's not like I'm into gore, but I need to have a peek at the badness. It's like driving by the scene of an accident and rubber-necking. We all do it even if we won't admit we're doing it. There's just base part of the human psyche that *needs* to look. So yeah, I admit it; I want to rubber-neck fights and the gore and the brutality in my books, too.

Whatever. It's just my opinion. Or maybe it's just me.

However, in a way I'm glad the author takes the easy way out in this climatic end-point; I'm not sure I *want* to know the details of what's done to Mac. My imagination can get the job done well enough, thank you very much.

Let me say this: I have no idea how Mac is going to pick herself up from this. I have no idea how she can go out and fight the good fight. I have no idea if she'll even survive. I have to wonder if that big toe that's dipped into the dark side will give her *something* to hang on to, something to fight back with.

I can't wait to read the next installment and find out!

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