Fever Moon: The Fear Dorcha (Graphic Novel) by Karen Marie Moning (Illustrations by Al Rio)

My Rating: 2.0 / 5.0

Amazon Rating: 3.60 / 5.00

Goodreads Rating: 3.97 / 5.00

The action in this book takes place at some point within the time frame of Shadowfever, book 5 of the Fever Series, so if you have not already read the earlier books you may want to avoid this review because it contains SPOILERS for those titles.

Now that the wall between the human and fae worlds has been shattered, Dublin is at the center of a war. As the newly-freed Unseelie bring death and destruction to the people trying to survive in the warzone, Mac faces the most deadly enemy that she has ever encountered. The Fear Dorcha is hunting Dublin’s streets, choosing victims close to her and leaving them horribly mutilated.

I read the first Fever book, Darkfever, with my book group and was so captivated by the story that I went on to read all five titles in the series, so I was quite excited to see this book arrive in the library. I am not familiar with graphic novels, although I enjoyed comics as a child, so this was a new experience for me.

The story itself was fairly brief and simplistic, which was rather disappointing after reading the novels, which had a great feeling of depth in the world building and character development. The Fear Dorche is a suitably terrifying adversary, but there is little sense of real danger and it is defeated rather too easily for my liking. It was a very quick read, even for me and I am a very slow reader, so I would have been rather angry if I had bought a copy to read. I am also not convinced that anyone who was not already familiar with the series would enjoy this title: although there is some background given, I doubt that it would be enough for a reader new to this world.

However, the biggest problem was the format itself. The artist had markedly different ideas about the look of many of the characters and places from the ones that I had in my head. Some of them seemed to be at odds with the descriptions I remembered from the books. This was especially true of Barrons in his animalistic form, which was much more human than was described in the books, so much so that it makes it laughable that Mac did not recognize him. I was also very unimpressed by the version of Mac that we are given. The actual depiction is fairly similar to how I had imagined her, but she is constantly presented in very scanty or provocative clothing and in poses that would give her severe backache and were too reminiscent of soft porn. Not only did I find this detracted from her character’s toughness, but it seemed to be misplaced in a book that will surely have a mostly female readership.

The presentation of Dublin was also a problem, as it looked far too much like a generically American city rather than one on Europe. However, I feel that the biggest weakness of the illustrations was their presentation of the Unseelie. Somebody somewhere said that radio has the best pictures, and this is also true of books, where only our imagination limits what images we ascribe to the people and places being described. This is why we are often disappointed by film of television adaptations, and I was very underwhelmed by the Unseelie, who were nowhere near as terrifying and otherworldly as I had imagined. This was one reason why the sense of danger was so lacking here, whilst in the novels it was a constant companion: these Unseelie just did not look deadly enough to make them scary.

I was pleased to see that I was not the only reviewer to have issues with the illustrations. Christine at The Happily Ever After . . . has similar reservations to mine, and gave the book a similar rating. I guess that I need to be much more careful if I approach a graphic novel in the future.

Elfland by Freda Warrington

My Rating: 4.0 / 5

Amazon Rating: 4.20 / 5

Goodreads Rating: 3.72 / 5

Winner: Romantic Times Book Reviewers’ Choice Award for Best Fantasy Novel 2009

Centuries ago the Aetherials ventured from their worlds in the Spiral to move amongst us. At first they showed their true forms, part animal or winged, but they soon learnt to appear human, and so the memories of animal-headed gods and winged angels became myths and folklore. In modern England, the small village of Cloudcroft is home to a number of Aetherials, including Lawrence Wilder, the Gatekeeper, who controls the Gates to the Otherworld. There are many small Gates spread all over the Earth, but every seven years, on the Night of the Summer Stars, all adult Aetherials gather at Freya’s Crown, near Cloudcroft, to travel through the main Gates to reconnect with the essential energy of their home realms. However, this time, Lawrence detects a great danger in the Otherworld that threatens to travel through the Gates and destroy all the Aetherials on Earth, so he seals all of them and refuses to reopen any of them for any reason. As the years pass, the young Aetherials cannot take part in the usual rite of passage in the Otherworld and struggle with the decision: to remain true to Aetherial culture, or to reject it and become as human as possible. Ugly family secrets and personal feuds bubble to the surface as the Gates remain closed and the need to reclaim their connection with the Spiral becomes a necessity to all the Aethereals, young and old.

We follow the families of young Aetherials Rosie Fox and Sam Wilder as they grow to adulthood amongst their Earth-bound families. Rosie seems to have the perfect home and family, although her elder brother, Matt, is domineering and distrustful of their Aetherial heritage. She and younger brother, Lucas, are more intrigued by their unusual abilities, such as their perception of the parallel Dusklands, which are like a psychedelic version of Earth. Sam is a delinquent who cannot seem to stay out of trouble, although his motives are often protective of his younger brother, Jon. Over the following years Matt rejects everything Aetherial as he takes a human wife, the mouse-like Faith, while Jon and Lucas attempt to reopen the Gates by using a combination of drugs. Rosie is desperately in love with Jon, but he is seemingly unaware of her existence and she finally agrees to marry Alastair, a human friend of Matt’s. However, bad boy Sam has always been fixated with her and as the wedding approaches she is hopelessly drawn to him. When a terrible accident occurs, Rosie and Sam must journey into the Otherworld to defeat the Evil lurking there in order to save themselves and their families.

I have read quite a lot of fantasy, and would count myself as a fan of the genre, so I was looking forward to this unusual version of the fairy / elf world. The Aetherials’ Spiral, their history and culture are fascinating, as are the parallel versions of Earth that they can access. However, I felt that we spent far too little time exploring that aspect of the story. Instead, most of the book is given over to the family dramas that surround the main characters, which I found a little disappointing. The first half to two-thirds of the book was slow and got bogged down in exploring the family relationships and dynamics, with the fantasy elements really pushed to the background. However, once the transition to the Otherworld occurred, and the fantasy aspects came to the fore, the pace increased and the book became much more successful. Unfortunately, as Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic points out, even here the world building could have been far more detailed, and I hope that the second book in the series spends much more time exploring this fascinating world.

The main characters are very three dimensional, though not necessarily very likeable. Many of the characters have secrets and do not behave honestly with their friends and family, which leads to a great deal of drama and tension, but makes it difficult to sympathize with them. This becomes a major problem when they are placed in danger and we need to care about them and their survival. Not that the human characters are any less dysfunctional. In fact, the two most destructive characters in the book are humans, bringing abusive incest and homicidal psychopathy to the party, so in some regards the Aetherials are far more sympathetic. However, infidelity is a recurring motif, as is self-deception, so it seems the author has a fascination with the lies we tell one-another and ourselves. Although there are a lot of clichéd Romantic Fiction aspects here, I do have to agree with Sarah at Bookworm Blues: the more melodramatic romantic plot points did not have me rolling my eyes and reaching for my sick bucket. The characters are so well drawn that their actions are totally believable, in a “Oh no! Don’t do that!” kind of way.

One aspect of this book that I really loved was the way in which the various houses and buildings have their own life force and presence. The Foxes’ home is warm and inviting, which seems to reflect the family’s connection to the earth magic of their particular Otherworld realm. The fact that the house can change and shift to provide what the characters need is almost more fantastical than the whole ‘alien elves living amongst us’ idea. We see this to much greater effect in the Wilder house. Being of the air realm, these characters are much colder and cerebral, with Lawrence, in particular, having a kind of obsessional self-containment that borders on madness. His house has a cold menace that is truly chilling and makes the unpleasant secrets that are revealed there even more unbearable. The disturbing images that surround the characters in prison reminded me of Hieronymus Bosch’s depictions of Hell, making me wonder how any Aetherial could survive an extended time in such an environment without losing their mind.

I really wanted to love this book as much as Kristen at Fantasy Cafe, and I did appreciate the wonderful writing and characterization, but I wanted more fantasy and less family angst in this ‘Fantasy’ title.