Feversong Closes the Book on an Addictive Urban Fantasy

Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series started, way back in Darkfever, with the death of a beloved sister. MacKayla Lane travels to Ireland to learn what she can about the mysterious murder of her sister, Alina, while she was attending college in Dublin. From there, Mac falls into the dangerous and seductive world of the Fae, and the series spirals down into a full-blown Armageddon, and then beyond.
It’s incredibly ballsy as urban fantasy goes; typically authors don’t put their heroines through the kind of terrors Mac faces, and very few of them destroy the world and then keep on writing. Mac’s first arc ended with Shadowfever, with the antagonist(s) safely (though tenuously) contained, but the world in burnt shambles.

A new story began in Iced, which follows the life of 14 year old Dani O’Malley, living in a ravaged Dublin. Dani has been Mac’s apprentice, friend, sister-in-arms, and betrayer, and absolutely nothing comes easy for her. Though they’re more often circling each other warily than interacting, this sequel arc has been very much about the relationship between Mac and Dani, and about Dani’s trajectory from abused child to her adult self.
When we first meet Dani, she’s literally hyperactive, with a power for hyper-speed that allows her to run away from her problems, and fast. After a five year sojourn in the Silvers (a series of faerie otherworlds where time doesn’t run the same), Dani returns, now calling herself Jada. Jada is hard and cold, eschewing Dani’s sloppy, uncontrolled emotions and deflections for hard precision and a tactical demeanor. While nobody is super pumped about this change, Dani/Jada is clear that they must accept her by her new terms. Like the destruction of the countryside and the continuing threat of annihilation, Dani’s personality has undergone permanent and indelible scarification. Feversong is the final part of Dani’s story, and oh baby, what a capper.

Mac is also struggling with past trauma, despite her reunion with her parents and a stable relationship with Barrons. Sometimes it’s in the moments of relief that we encounter the greatest dangers. The first arc dealt with the threat of the sinsar dubh, a book (for lack of a better term) of the Seelie King that contains dangerous occult powers. In this second arc, in a moment of weakness, Mac is possessed. It is going to take all hands on deck—the Keltars, The Nine, Dancer, the sidhe-seers—to deal with this horrific new danger, to bring Mac back from the abyss and save the world (again).
In Feversong, Moning runs a contrast between Dani/Jada and the possessed Mac. Jada softens, becoming more like her adolescent self, and it’s gratifying to see her integrate the extremities of her personality. She doesn’t have to be iced over or completely out of control; there’s a middle way. As far as Mac goes: she’s been on this path so long, and gone through so many versions (what are we on, Mac 9.0? More?), that her final transformations feel like an inevitability. Mac is like a shark: she swims or she dies. Her predatory nature is what makes her relationship with Barrons work, even while it opens her to the danger of the sinsar dubh.

Where the Fever series starts with the death of a beloved sister, Feversong closes with the reconciliation of a number of sisterly relationships. Yes, sure, there’s plenty of growly brooding coming from the men—Dancer, Ryodan, and Barrons, wrapped in a complicated web of alliances and antagonisms—but Dani and Mac are at the heart of things. One of the threads left hanging after Shadowfever was how these two would navigate the reality of their dueling affection and betrayal. Here we are, again at the end of things, and it’s only taken the threat of another apocalypse for them to make things right. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Feversong is available now.