Burned: Mac is Back in the Next Book in Karen Marie Moning’s Fever Series

Spin-off series are always going to be a gamble. For every Frasier or The Simpsons, there’s a Joanie Loves Chachi or Joey. (Remember Joey? It was a Friends spin-off featuring one of the friends…can’t remember which.) Especially when dealing with hugely successful books like the Karen Marie Moning’s paranormal romance series Fever, there’s always the risk of losing some readers in the shift, but the latest book in that universe, Burned, should satisfy any Feverish fan.
Moning followed Shadowfever, the fifth (and supposedly final) Fever book with Iced, ostensibly the start of a new trilogy starring Dani, the adopted kid sister of her previous protagonist, MacKayla Lane. When I finished it, I really thought I was going to be one of those lost people—it was just too much of a departure. Now that I’ve read Burned, I most definitely still have “The Fever.” It jumps right back into everything I loved: will-they-or-won’t-they shenanigans with power couple Mac (who can see the hidden world of the Fae) and Barrons (brooding, centuries-old shapeshifter), Fae danger, inventively disgusting Unseelie monsters, a brewing apocalypse, questionable musical cues, hot Scottish dudes, and a scream-worthy cliffhanger ending. (Like David Foster Wallace and the endnote,Moning has turned the cliffhanger into something of an art form.)
I expected Burned to be the second book in the Dani trilogy, but it quickly disposes of her, dumping her into the Silvers—a sort of interdimensional house of portals through all space and time—making way for the return of Mac and a variety of other point-of-view characters. While Dani’s concerns, and people’s concerns about Dani, fuel much of the plot, the novel’s interests seem larger than any single character’s interests, to its credit. Burned could easily be read as a direct sequel to Shadowfever, which closed with not so much an ending as a pause.

Moning has pulled off an impressive feat, pulling together threads from previous books that, at the time, seemed like digressions, and tying them into a larger narrative. It also contextualizes some of the uncomfortable sexuality of the very young Dani, who was thrust into the midst of a stew of sex and violence in Iced. Moning is a master of walking me up to very complicated, messy situations—especially ones involving trauma or grief—and forcing me to examine my discomfort.
In the series opener, Darkfever, Mac, in her quest to find her sister’s killer, goes through the Kübler-Ross stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, and her move from a sleepy Georgia town to bustling Dublin mirrors the dislocation of grief, which then is only deepened by her growing awareness of a whole shadow world of monsters and fairies. After that almost easy trajectory through grieving—which is by no means easy—Moning keeps digging down and piling on, forcing her characters to survive all manner of traumas. And survival is the key. Dani can be annoying and bratty, because hyperactivity and naiveté are her defense mechanisms. That she’s annoying, doesn’t mean she’s not hurting, damaged, and grieving.

I love how Moning pitches a full scale apocalypse in the middle of a paranormal romance series. There is nothing mincing or episodic about her plots; you cannot be assured everything will be reset to factory settings at the end of the episode. She might just murder the world, and the world will stay murdered. Iced and Burned take place in a post-apocalyptic landscape, and their protagonists are hurt, lost people. There are no take backsies, and forgiveness is not a simple, one-step process. Even simply (magic-induced) forgetting isn’t salvation; indeed, often forgetting just makes things worse. The best thing you can say about any sequel is that it justifies its existence, and Burned casts a different light on Iced, in addition to being another addictive romp with characters I love. Seven books into a series, I really couldn’t ask for more.
Do you have The Fever?