Faefever by Karen Marie Moning

Karen Marie Moning - Fever Series

1. Darkfever (see previous)
2. Bloodfever (see previous)
3. Faefever

The Fever series is also available as audio books narrated by Joyce Bean. Listen to a free podcast of book 1, Darkfever.
See index for more.

Category: Crème Brûlée - My All-Time Favorites (A+)
Flame Height: 3" out of 9"

The very first thing I noticed about Faefever is that Mac is now aware she has an audience. By that I mean that in the earlier books, particularly in the Prologues, we’re never sure if Mac is telling us the story, we’re reading her journal, or we are looking over the shoulder of someone who is reading her journal, possibly after her death.

But now, in Faefever, the tone changes,

“for those of you just joining me, my name is MacKayla Lane, Mac for short... Don’t settle into your chair and relax. It’s not just my world that’s in trouble; it’s your world, too. It’s happening, right now, while you’re sitting there, munching a snack, getting ready to immerse yourself in a fictional escape. Guess what? It’s not fiction, and there’s no escape.”

Holy Crap! Now I don’t have ANY idea what we are reading!

In this book, we learn MUCH more about the Dark Book, or Sinsar Dubh and its history, and much more about the Fae, particularly Sidhe royalty. I have a feeling that the info is going to turn out to be VERY important, so stick bookmarks in at those points. I also have a feeling that The Four Stones will be showing up and playing a major role in future books (they are in Faefever’s glossary, but not mentioned in the book).

Faefever is a good place to start if you haven’t read the previous two Fever books because Moning DOES recap quite extensively. Maybe TOO extensively. Honestly, as much as I love these books, I think she would have been better off breaking the complete story up into 4 instead of 5 books. There’s too much recapping, and too much of a feeling of repetition of the scenes between Mac and Barrons and Mac and the Shades.

We do meet up with the Keltar Druids from the Highlander series in Faefever. Well sorta indirectly through Christian MacKeltar. And it’s confirmed that he IS the same Christian MacKeltar we met as the then teenaged son of Christopher MacKeltar, the modern day MacKeltar from Kiss of the Highlander. He refers to Drustan, Dageus and Cian as his uncles. It’s also confirmed that it was Cian (it's not confirmed but I suspect he was with Dageus), at the mansion that was the scene of the slaughter in Bloodfever.

It’s also confirmed that the Lord Master is Darroc-- the Seelie Sidhe from The Immortal Highlander, whose punishment for working with the Unseelie Wild Hunt to overthrow the Seelie Queen was to be made a mortal. Furthermore, though it’s not confirmed, I strongly suspect Darroc is also the one who was trying to sell pages from the Sinsar Dubh to Cian’s nemesis, Lucan. From Spell of the Highlander:

"...an unusual man with long coppery hair and shimmering copper eyes had sought him out, claiming to have knowledge of the ciphers in which the Dark Book was written. The man had dripped a deep seated arrogance that could only have been born of some kind of power—either his own, or close association with someone who made him fearless... But then the man had told him that he’d actually lived among the Fae for a time, he’d been familiar with the runes on the Hallows, and he’d spoken a tongue he’d alleged was that of the Tuatha De themselves. He’d also displayed an intimate knowledge of the Seelie and Unseelie courts. "

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

We also learn much more about the sidhe-seers and we learn who has been the guardian of the Dark Book up until 20 years ago.

Now, the OMGHOLYSHIT! ending and the apocalyptic events leading up to it: I won’t be sure how I feel about it until I read how it’s dealt with in the subsequent books. And deal with it she must. It can’t be ignored, and KMM can’t brush it off with a Druid memory erase. Actually, I wonder if the prologue to Darkfever and Faefever’s glossary are telling us how it’s dealt with? In any case I DO have to give kudos to KMM for going out on that limb with the ending. First of all, it proves she’s definitely not writing a Highlanders Romance, and secondly, it’s a brave author who makes it clear that NOBODY, even her heroine, is safe; that sometimes no one comes to the rescue at the last minute. I know that the ending is a hot button for some readers ::coughKMONTcough::, but if handled right, I think it can be powerful.
♥ ♥ ♥
I finished the audio books of the Highlander stories right before Faefever was released and it turns out it was a perfect time to refresh my memory since the first time I read the Highlander books, I didn’t really pay much attention to the Fae lore and intrigues. After all, it was the ROMANCE that counted in that series, right?

So the following is just my rambling questions and speculations. If you haven’t read the Highlanders, it may not make much sense. Aw hell, even if you DID read them, my long-winded babbling probably won’t make much sense! I’m sure the Moning Maniacs will laugh at me (not really, they're too nice to do that) because they somehow can remember every single minute detail of every single book and therefore they put all these pieces together as soon as they read book 1, Darkfever. How do they DO that?! *sigh* I quit visiting the KMM board long ago because I always felt soooo stupid in the face of their awesome memories.

Anyway... here goes. There's a few Fever spoilers and a whole lot of Highlander spoilers ahead:

Theories on Barrons: What is he?

Definitely has Druid abilities, including Voice, but claims there is no spell that can protect from the Shades, yet he IS protected from them, indeed, they seem to be afraid of him. Also, notice that Barrons told the Lord Master to leave Mac alone and he did as Barrons asked. And what’s the story with the animosity between V’Lane and Barrons? Was V’Lane actually afraid of Barrons in Faefever?

Unseelie cannot touch Seelie Hallows, yet he held the Seelie Spear. However, was he able to control his reaction to it? Mac observed no effect, yet he put his hands in his pockets right after holding it. Possibly to hide burns or wounds of some kind? Would the Unseelie King, the most powerful Unseelie, be able to touch it?

Barron’s tattoos: In Bloodfever, Mac mentions tattoos on Barrons’ torso—a search of the ebooks didn’t turn up any more identifying info on that—which bugs me because I swear somewhere in one of the books, Mac sees a tattoo or mark on Barrons and tells us what it looks like. GRRRR, frustrating, because I can’t remember if she saw something that could be a winged serpent or not which would mean he is/was a follower of the Draghar (from Dark Highlander).

Does his having a tattoo mean that he’s at least dabbled in the Dark Druid arts like Cian (Spell of the Highlander)? Either of those explanations would also account for the animosity towards the MacKeltars we learn of in Faefever that started in Bloodfever when they were also at the mansion to retrieve the amulet.

Mac’s tattoo from him is: “an intricate pattern of black and red ink with a faintly luminescent Z in the middle, a mystical bar code, a sorcerous brand.” My understanding of the combo of black and red runes meant it was created through Druid Dark Arts. Barrons had this to say about Cian’s tattoos in Bloodfever: “Although one of the men was versed in the Black Arts, both were Druid trained.” Mac: “How do you know one of them was into black magic?” Barrons: “He was heavily tattooed. Black magic calls a price, Ms. Lane, that can be... diminished by working protection runes into the skin.”

Barrons owns tattooing equipment, and by his own admission knows how to use it and what the price of the Dark Arts is, so can we infer from that that he does have runes tattooed somewhere on him that would indicate that he has performed Black Magic?

Remember Into the Dreaming, the Highlander novella? What if the Unseelie King decided to torture and train a Druid to be his Hand of Vengeance this time? In some ways, Barrons echoes Aedan MacKinnon’s behavior-- cold, unfeeling, yet occasional glimpses of humanity break through—will loving and being loved in return break his contract with the Unseelie King too?

Remember also that the Unseelie king would send Aedan on missions during his training. In Faefever, Christian shows Mac pictures of Barrons at different points in recent history. In one he is with wealthy and presumably influential socialites 71 years ago; in another, he was with military men, including the Irish revolutionary Michael Collins in 1922. Druids are NOT immortal, yet in all the pictures, Barrons looks exactly the same. That could be explained if Barrons is indeed the new Vengence for the Unseelie king. His missions have been to find the Hallows, particularly the Dark Book.

Now, one more piece to ponder. In Faefever, Barrons is, in his usual harsh, humiliating way, trying to teach Mac to withstand the effects of the Druid Voice. At one point she says to him,

"'You might as well have raped me. In fact, that’s exactly what you did!' He rolled hard and fast, and I was on my back beneath him, with my hands pinned above my head, the weight of his body crushing me to the floor, his face inches from mine. He was breathing harder than the exertion merited. 'Make no mistake, Ms. Lane, I didn’t rape you. You can lie there on your pretty little P.C. ass and claim with your idealistic little P.C. arguments that any violation of your will is rape and that I’m a big, bad bastard, and I’ll tell you that you’re full of shit, and you’ve obviously never been raped. Rape is much, much worse. Rape isn’t something you walk away from. You crawl.'"

Words from a man that has endured ALL kinds of torture from the Unseelie king?

Did that story (Into the Dreaming) play out immediately before the same period as the Fever series, or maybe the king had more than one Vengence-in-training? No one has seen either the Unseelie King nor the Seelie Queen in quite some time (Darkfever), and she has not appeared to help the MacKeltars reinforce the walls between worlds (Faefever). So are the King and Queen together as they are at the end of Into the Dreaming? She does refer to him as her ex-consort and as an ancient in Spell, and in Dreaming, the king does mention that he’d been with the young (to him) queen before. So it’s quite possible that the two of them are together and as you’ll see below with the quote from Spell, maybe the current events of Fever happen because they are together and not paying attention to what’s going on. After all, from that quote from Spell, you can see that she never thought Darroc would be a threat. So, according to Spell, she’s had to go back in time and set things up so that the worlds can be saved this time.

Oh, and that THING under Barrons’ garage that Mac hears? Maybe it’s Barrons! When he is not with her searching for the Dark Book, where does he go? Maybe nowhere? Maybe the Unseelie king has ordered him chained back up and orders his continued torture that will turn him completely into his Hand of Vengence. The fact that we find out in Faefaver that the Dark Mirrors (as in Cian’s prison; as in the mirrors in the Lord Master’s house) were originally created by the Unseelie King and used as a way to travel between realms, and Barrons not only has one but USES it, might be an indication that he is traveling at the behest of the Unseelie King, including returning to the lower levels of his garage that are seemingly inaccessible.

As I said above, we learn in Faefever that Barrons is MUCH older than he looks—so he's either not human or possibly being kept alive by the Unseelie king like Aedan was. Unless of course he IS the Unseelie king . Would the Unseelie King, the most powerful Unseelie, be able to touch a Seelie hallow? I admit that that idea IS far-fetched, but what the hell... even Mac wonders the same thing, and he DOES put his hands in his pockets after touching the Spear.

Still with me? Because I'm not done with my speculations yet.

From Spell of the Highlander:
[This is actually the scene from the ending of The Dark Highlander and the beginning of The Immortal Highlander but from Queen Aoibheal's POV]

FIRST PROLOGUE

Aoibheal, queen of the Fae stood in the catacombs beneath The Belthew Building, concealed by countless layers of illusion, a formless projection of herself, beyond any Sidhe-seer’s vision, beyond even her own race’s perception.

In the dimly lit labyrinthine tombs, Adam Black was pacing furiously, holding his ears and cursing a wailing Chloe Zanders.

But it was not Adam’s plight that concerned her now.

It was her own.

Tonight she’d wielded the formidable magic of the Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danaan to destroy the Druid sect of the Draghar.

But it was not for that purpose alone she’d done it. As ever, she had motives within motives. Her use of the full power of the High Queen of the Seelie Court of the Light had caused a blackout of all mortal magic throughout Britain, part of Scotland and a fair portion of Wales.

It had shattered wards humans believed unbreakable, voided protections spells, and temporarily leeched all sacred mortal relics of any power they possessed.

Closing her eyes, Aoibheal turned her far-vision outward, analyzing the weft and weck of the fabric of her world. She’d pulled a thread here, tugged a thread there, and the infinitesimal changes she sought had begun.

Somewhere in Tibet an ancient sorcerer was seeking the unholiest of Dark Hallows.

Somewhere in London a thief was casing a wealthy residence reputed to contain unimaginable treasures within.

Somewhere a Keltar was biding his time, waiting for a vengeance long overdue.

Ah, yes, it had begun. . . .

And here’s the... well, I guess it’s the ending of Spell of the Highlander, but it serves as an Epilogue.

"Synchro—”
“—nicity,” Queen Aoibheal of the Tuatha Dé Danaan murmured, her iridescent eyes shimmering.

A collision of possibles so incalculably improbable that it would appear to imply divine intervention.

The corners of her lips lifted in a faint smile. She smoothed them. She’d been employing a mortal form so much of late that she was beginning to mimic their expressions.

Humans were forever attributing the meddling of the Fae to the divine. As well they should, for handling so many threads, subtly altering the weft and weck of the world, truly required something of the divine.

They were here now.

Her players, her pieces on the board. More than pawns, less than kings.

The catastrophe that had occurred in the seventeenth century hadn’t taken place after all, not since she’d rearranged events to get the Keltar’s underground chamber sealed. The one in the twentieth century hadn’t come to fruition either, for the same reason. Nor had the other two, though for different reasons.

“J’adoube,” she whispered. I touch. I adjust.

Seven times now she’d prevented the extinction of the purest and most potent of the Druid lines.

And positioned the five most powerful Druids that had ever lived precisely where she wanted them. Where they could ally her.

Where they could save her.

There was Dageus, possessing far more knowledge than any one Druid should have: all the knowledge of the Draghar, the thirteen ancients. The memories she’d left in him were doing things to him he wasn’t admitting. Not to Drustan, not to his mate.

There was Cian, possessing far more power than any one Druid should have: the genetic fluke, the unexpected mutation born once in a bloodline. The things Dageus and Cian could do together if they put their minds to it worried even her.

Then there was Drustan: compared to his dangerously endowed kin, modest of power, modest of knowledge, yet superior in a way they could never be. Dageus and Cian could go either way, good or evil. Drustan MacKeltar was that unique kind of man whose name lived forever in legends of men—a warrior so pure of heart that he was beyond corrupting. A man who would die for his beliefs, not just once but ten thousand times over if necessary.

As for her other two chosen, she would be seeing them soon.

Below her, in Castle Keltar’s great hall, the humans stood talking, oblivious to her presence. Blissfully unaware that a little over five years in their future, their world was in chaos, the walls between Man and Faery were down, and the Unseelie ruled with an icy, brutal hand. The Shades were feeding again, the Hunters were enforcing compliance, calling death sentences for the slightest infraction, and the exquisite Unseelie Princes were indulging their insatiable appetite for mortal women, brutally raping, leaving mindless shells.

And she?

Ah, that was the problem.

Her gaze shifted inward from the tableau below.

Though her race could move at will through the past, they could not penetrate a future that had not yet occurred. If one attempted to go forward beyond one’s present existence, one encountered an oppressive white mist, nothing more. If one went too far back in the past, one encountered the same mist. Not even the Tuatha Dé Danaan understood time. They knew how to traverse only the simplest facet of it.

She’d sifted back countless times now, from five and a half years in Earth’s future—her present—delicately altering events while trying not to change too much. Concealing from all, even those of her own court, that she was temporally displaced while doing it. Worlds were fragile; one could destroy an entire planet inadvertently. She already carried the weight of such an error. It was a heavy burden. As did her long-ago consort, though the unfathomably ancient Dark King cared nothing about the blood of billions.

She’d been alive for over sixty thousand years. Many of her kind wearied of existence long before that.

Not she. She had no wish to cease. Though the loss of Adam Black to his mortal mate grieved her, and she’d considered undoing that as well, she’d learned that there was a human element that was highly dangerous to meddle with. Love’s power was violently unpredictable; it affected events in ways her Tuatha Dé mind had failed to anticipate on more than one occasion.

She could not hope to predict what she could not understand. There were times when she suspected human love harbored a power more elemental and greater than any her race possessed. It infused things with strength in impossible excess of the sum of its parts. Indeed, it had been the matching of each Keltar below with his mate that had tempered them, given them cores of steel, and made her Druids into allies worthy of a queen.

The room below fell into a sudden hush. The silence drew her gaze back to the small group of men and women.

Dageus, Chloe, Drustan, Gwen, and Jessica were all staring at Cian, who had a startled expression on his face and was gazing directly up at her, where she stood beyond the balustrade.

She stiffened. Impossible! She wasn’t even truly there, but a projection of herself, concealed by countless layers of illusion, beyond an impenetrable Fae veil. Not even the most adept of Sidhe-seers would be able to isolate her formless form within the dimensional deception she’d created!

Ah, yes, this Druid had power beyond any other.

“What is it, Cian?” Drustan said, glancing over his shoulder in the direction Cian was looking. “Is aught amiss? Do you see something, kinsman?”

Aoibheal stared at the Highlander, her lips tightening. She smoothed them again. Waited for him to betray her presence.

No, no, no, it was not time yet—it could too drastically alter things—it could destroy what chance they had!

She’d attained a tenuous balance of possibles at best. She needed more time.

She held his gaze, used her human eyes to convey a mute plea. Say nothing, Keltar-mine.

The ninth-century Highlander regarded her silently. After a moment he inclined his head in the barest nod, then turned and glanced at Drustan.

“Nay,” he said. “ ’Tis nothing, Drustan. Nothing at all.”

So we knew the apocalyptic ending was coming, we just weren't sure which book KMM would end up placing it in.

"And positioned the five most powerful Druids that had ever lived precisely where she wanted them"

Who are the five? In Faefever we find out that they are also mentioned in a sidhe-seer prophecy. So who are they? We know Drustan, Dageus, Cian. But who are the other two? Neither Alina nor Mac are Druids, so that leaves them out. Barrons? Quite possibly, even if he turns out to be Vengence or a follower of the Draghar, that doesn’t mean she wouldn’t manipulate his presence too. Christian MacKeltar? We know that Christopher, as a MacKeltar, IS a Druid, so therefore we can assume that Christian is too. However, Christian is still very young, so would even HE know how powerful he is? We know he can tell if someone is lying, like Dageus and Drustan’s father could. And we never really got to know ANYTHING about his father Christopher in the Highlander books, did we? So he’s still a possibility, although I don’t believe he is anywhere near as powerful as the time-traveling Keltar Druids.

BTW, what’s up with the “dreamy-eyed” guy that works with Christian? I think there’s more to him than meets the eye. Is the fact that she refers to his eyes a clue? Are his eyes blue? Didn't Grimm (To Tame a Highland Warrior) have blue eyes? So is the "dreamy-eyed" guy a Berserker like Grimm or is he just an innocent bystander used as a red herring? Doesn't seem far-fetched to me that KMM might tie in the earlier Highlander books too.

And what about other Druid families? In Spell, Cian says that he presumes that a different Druid family serves as guardians of the Dark Book. But in Faefever, we learn who the guardians were, and they weren’t Druids. So are there other powerful Druid families out there?

And what about Adam and his son Circenn? Aoibheal granted their wish to be mortal in The Immortal Highlander, but who is to say she took ALL their powers away? Could she have made them mortal but Druid? And she said at the time that she couldn’t undo Adam’s transformation into mortal but at the end of Spell she says "she’d considered undoing that as well". Aoibheal’s powers are definitely the wild card here.

Oh, and since Adam’s wife, Gabby, is a sidhe-seer, can we expect her to appear? It seems likely that Aoibheal would want Adam nearby to help. BTW, just why WERE all the sidhe showing up in Cincinnati in The Immortal Highlander?

New mystery question raised in Faefever: What happened a little over 20 years ago? For that matter, I'd like to know about all seven times that Aoibheal saved the Keltars. The ending of The Dark Highlander brought down all kinds of wards worldwide, but that was about 5 ½ years ago. Did Aoibheal cause something else to happen 20 years ago or did she have to save us from something else back then? She DOES mention the other times she intervened to prevent catastrophes. Whatever it was, I suspect that Alina and Mac were sent to America as a direct result of it. Those that were guarding the Dark Book lost possession of it that night. "Terrible things happened" and it vanished. But WHAT happened? And was this something that Aoibheal could not go back and prevent, but could only get the two girls away in hopes that they would one day return and be part of saving both realms?

Oh, and a bit more speculation about the ending: Where and WHO is the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse? Could it be V’Lane? Was Mac right way back when she suspected him of being an Unseelie Prince? Did the Unseelie King forbid Barrons to reveal who V’Lane really is (assuming my speculation above has any merit)?

And who booby-trapped the Orb?

Mac told Inspecter Jayne to get his family away from Dublin. How did she know that the walls between realms would only come down in Dublin? Or DID they only come down in Dublin? And, if so, WHY only Dublin? Or will it be like a domino effect where the walls STARTED coming down there but will then ripple out until the walls are down over the entire world?

PHEW! I’m exhausted! And my brain hurts.

Piquant Opines: Kmont, Darque Reviews, Romance Rookie, RT



Have you read this book? Feel free to review or link to a review in the comments. Even if you don't agree!

Do you agree or disagree with my speculations? Feel free to share your own theories.