Karen Marie Moning
Dani O'Malley #1
Urban fantasy
3 stars
Bite-Sized Review
Iced was an enjoyable book despite heaping on lust like it was candy on Halloween. Don't expect it to be Fever, but it does have KMM's characteristic engaging writing style and many of the same interesting characters I loved in the Fever series. And please note that even though Dani is fourteen, this book should definitely not be categorized as YA.
King-Sized Review
Well. I was, like many other people, a huge fan of the Fever series and both excited and apprehensive about the release of Iced. Excited because, more Fever! And apprehensive because a) Dani was kind of an annoying narrator whenever she seized the reins in Fever, and b) since she's fourteen, any romantic under-, over-, or just general tones come off as icky.It was both better and worse than I thought it would be. Yes, there were times when Dani was an annoying idiot. She thinks she's very smart, and she is, but she's still fourteen, which makes her sort of automatically an idiot. It could, therefore, be argued that her obnoxiousness added realism to the story, but I'm not sure the realism was worth having to deal with all the crap, not to mention the number of times she uses the word "dude". Luckily, Dani is also funny and learning about her is interesting because she doesn't share well.
Let's take a look at the plot. Iced takes place pretty much right after the end of Shadowfever, so if you haven't read that, don't read the rest of this review.
Okay. I'm going to assume all the infidels are gone now and keep talking. The Unseelie King is off somewhere with the concubine/Aoibheal, Cruce/the Sinsar Dubh is frozen in a block of ice under the abbey, and Faery has merged with our world, resulting in lots of deaths and Interdimensional Fairy Potholes. Most of the action takes place in Dublin, centered at Chester's, Ryodan's weird club/fae hunting grounds. There's conflict between Dani and Ryodan as he tries to mold her into his future...what would you call it? A mate? See, kind of icky. Most of this molding occurs around a series of strangely frozen locations as everyone tries to solve the mystery of the "iced" places.
A lot of what made Fever a really interesting series was not knowing anything about a single thing that was going on, and then learning more and knowing even less. Iced tries to recapture some of that mystique with the question of who or what is causing these strange temperature fluctuations, but as the phrase "temperature fluctuations" suggests, it's not quite as captivating.
And don't make the mistake of thinking that because Dani is fourteen, this is a YA book. There's waaaayyyy too much time spent on sex. Dani has not one, not two, but three men hovering, waiting for her to grow up a bit so their intentions become a little less creepy. I could definitely have skipped the sections from Christian's perspective, since they were overly angsty and I already knew he was seriously losing it. All he thinks about is getting Dani, along with a little bit of killing Ryodan, which got tiresome really quickly.
The book also included a few peeks into the mind of Kat, now the de facto Grand Mistress of the sidhe-seers. These were more or less unrelated to the main plot and would have been a welcome relief from all the male posturing going on in Dublin, except that they were all about Cruce and how unbelievably hot he was. Basically, the sex was so overdone it just sort of shriveled up into this grayish strip of burned meat. And the main character never even got any (fortunately).
But other than that, I enjoyed the book. KMM has an especially enthralling writing style that works in Iced about as well as in the rest of her books. I think that even though I wasn't expecting Iced to be as good as Fever, I was still a little disappointed when I was right. It really is a good read for a Fever fan, though. It's just not Fever.
