Fever Moon: The Fear Dorcha (Fever)

by Karen Marie Moning, Al Rio (Artist), David Lawrence (Scripter), Cliff Richards (Illustrations)

An all-new Mac & Barrons story by #1 “New York Times” bestselling author Karen Marie Moning, marvelously adapted into a full-color graphic novel by writer David Lawrence and illustrator Al Rio 

In “Fever Moon, ” we meet the most ancient and deadly Unseelie ever created, the Fear Dorcha. For eons, he’s traveled worlds with the Unseelie king, leaving behind him a path of mutilation and destruction. Now he’s hunting Dublin, and no one Mac loves is safe.
Dublin is a war zone. The walls between humans and Fae are down. A third of the world’s population is dead and chaos reigns. Imprisoned over half a million years ago, the Unseelie are free and each one Mac meets is worse than the last. Human weapons don’t stand a chance against them.
With a blood moon hanging low over the city, something dark and sinister begins to hunt the streets of Temple Bar, choosing its victims by targeting those closest to Mac. Armed only with the Spear of Destiny and Jericho Barrons, she must face her most terrifying enemy yet.

Hardcover, 144 pages  Published July 10th 2012 by Del Rey  ISBN 0345525485 (ISBN13: 9780345525482)

This graphic novel had very detailed illustrations. The emotions and intensity of the story leapt off the pages. After what has happened to Mac in the past, she’s out for revenge. She’s pissed off and now that her friends and acquaintances are being attacked, it’s personal. She doesn’t run from anything, in fact she runs towards it.

It was entertaining to see how the artwork portrayed the villain with no face, and how each of the victims had parts of their face stolen. Mac’s purpose is to discover 1) who is stealing face parts 2) how many faces are they going to take and 3) how much time does she have.

I was impressed by how much detail went into the artwork. The city is in the middle of a war and buildings are destroyed. Most of the story takes place at night and it’s dark, dirty and falling apart. Each brick, facial and body expression, plus details in the crowded bars and streets were all very precise. The landscape is gloomy, the creatures are frightful and the men, well..they are sexy!

The majority of the story is told in dialogue and pictures, with some side details along the way. This has been my favorite form in graphic novels as it really helps to push along the plot at a faster pace, as well as getting to know the characters better at the same time.

There is a bonus feature in the back of the book where we not only get a detailed overview of the Fever series by the author herself but we also get a handful of pages where each of the characters are drawn and their involvement in the series are detailed. The fully colored pages add the extra visuals to the story that help us put a face to the name.

Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic invited me to blog over there on the eve of the release of The Sentients of Orion series in E-book in the USA. You can read how the series came about and what I was thinking as I wrote it.

Also many, many thanks to Rebekah and Belinda my interview is now up on POD-O-MATIC and YouTube.

And I recommend you all check out this great interview by 40K Books with futurist Bruce Sterling. I even get to ask Bruce a question!

Fade to Black is everything you could want from a debut novel, and so much more. Raw and passionate, without the trappings of an author trying to squeeze out the next tale in a series, it grabs you by the scruff of the neck and refuses to let go.

That isn’t to say that Francis Knight has written something that lacks style or flair; far from it. But in this case the fluid language, wonderfully depicted settings and deep characters are far more the tools used to convey the heavy plot than the tale itself.

Fade takes place in a film noir style metropolis of both magic and technology. The setting isn’t any one thing and nor are the characters, everything takes on a double or triple meaning; from the sterile and strict Upside to the raucous heartbeat of Under. When Rojan Dizon, bounty hunter and mage in hiding, begins his search for his missing niece – taken by those who don’t fit into his world – he sets off a chain reaction that leads him into a society that should never have existed.

The story sweeps across jagged turns, never quite staying on a single path for the reader to get comfortable, but making sure they stay on the ride until the end.

Characters are multifaceted, often having multiple agendas, and this includes Rojan himself. As the tale twists and turns through the three-hundred or so pages it becomes clear that as a narrator he is keeping something close to his chest. From a purely academic viewpoint these are some of the most realistic characters in fiction, as is evidenced not only by their hopes and fears but also by how they have been shaped by their surroundings.

Most of Fade to Black is dark and dirty, as is everything beneath the Heights. Emotion is the key to its success, as it is very easy to start empathising with every individual. Including the unpleasant ones. And while it is a very serious novel, with an underlying mystery that has a habit of scraping at your heart, it maintains a sense of humour that prevents the reader from dropping too far into the Black.

Once the mystery begins to unfold it is impossible to put it down. Fade to Black will leave you feeling raw and satisfied.