Dark Fever

Well, as an antidote to reading Orphan Master's Son, I dove into this supernatural fantasy thriller. Author Karen Marie Moning has written two series and this book is the first in the "Fever" series (Highlander being the other). The premise is that our protagonist, a carefree, 20-year old named MacKayla (or Mac for short) has her life turned upside down when her older sister, who has been attending university in Dublin, is brutally murdered. But when the Dublin police find no leads into identifying Alina's killer, this sheltered young woman from a small town in Georgia decides to take matters into her own hands. It's only weeks after the murder when Mac is able to retrieve a final disturbing message from Alina left on her cell phone:
“We’ve got to talk, Mac! There’s so much you don’t know. My God, you don’t even know what you are! There are so many things I should have told you, but I thought I could keep you out of it until things were safer for us. I’m going to try to make it home”—she broke off and laughed bitterly, a caustic sound totally unlike Alina—“but I don’t think he’ll let me out of the country. I’ll call you as soon—” More static. A gasp. “Oh, Mac, he’s coming!” Her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. “Listen to me! We’ve got to find the”—her next word sounded garbled or foreign, something like shi-sadu, I thought. “Everything depends on it. We can’t let them have it! We’ve got to get to it first! He’s been lying to me all along. I know what it is now and I know where—”
When Mac arrives in Dublin, she is horrified to realize that she can see creatures that no one else does, effectively looking beneath the glamour of the Fae and viewing the real monsters or beauties that they are. Mac is out of her depth and so grasps at the help offered by ostensible bookstore owner Jericho Barrons. Barrons is out to get the book Alina mentioned, the Sinsar Dubh, for his own purposes and he will use Mac to help him find it; whether or not she survives is secondary to him.
Mac is an interesting character, driven by love of her dead sister but tortured with (appropriately) self-doubt about her ability to deal with this crazy situation. She spends a little too much time worrying about her appearance for my taste, but that won't stop me from seeking out the next book in the series, Bloodfever. Additional reviews from Publishers Weekly, and from Booklist (reprinted below).

MacKayla "Mac" Lane is a small-town southern girl living a life of suntans and shopping. All that changes when her sister dies in Ireland and a cryptic message on Mac's cell phone raises disturbing questions about the nature of her sister's death. Mac follows the lead to Dublin and the strange life her sister led, on to the darkly dangerous book-dealer Jericho Barrons, and a burgeoning war with deadly Fae that humankind doesn't even realize has begun. Time-travel-romance maven Moning reshapes her Celtic lore for a radically different and engaging new dark fantasy series. Mac's first-person narrative is more than point of view; it's a true recounting of how a sheltered young girl grows to accept the role fate has dealt her. And while moments of sexual awareness hint that a relationship between Mac and Jericho could complicate matters in the future, wisely there is no full-blown romance here to distract from the complex introduction to Moning's new world. Nina Davis
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