Bookfanatic reviewed on 3/16/2011

Helpful Score: 1

This book is very long at 600 some pages.

Some mild spoilers below, but I haven't given away the story...

Mac and Barrons's relationship finally culminates in a HEA of sorts, but Barrons being who he is doesn't get very sentimental. Barrons is after all Barrons. He still retains his alpha male edge. He isn't your typical hero. He has done some very, very bad things in the past for which he is not apologetic. I liked the honesty in his character. He's a predator. He doesn't pretend he's not. Once you understand his motivations, some of what he's done is understandable. I loved that he was wildly possessive and loyal to Mac. He cares for her much more than he has let on. I think most astute readers have suspected it all along.

Mac is the darkest and strongest here, but Shadowfever could have been about 100-200 pages shorter. The writing is not as tight as it could have been. The book is incredibly introspective. Much of it is Mac second guessing and over-analyzing things. "I love him. I want to be with him. Why didn't I tell him I love him when I had the chance?.. No, I don't trust him. I don't want to be with him. He's a jerk. He only wants me for my OOP abilities... I want him. I love him blah blah." Ugh. Make up your mind, Mac. She spends more time asking herself questions that she does talking to anyone else. She has entire pages where she's having an internal monologue. It gets to be too much. That's why I give this book 3.5 stars instead of 4.5 or 5 stars.

This book is primarily told from the perspectives of Dani and Mac. Would it have killed the author to give us more than one chapter from Barrons's perspective? There's a page and a half from his perspective, but that's it. We get answers about Barrons's background, the anguished thing in the basement, what Mac really is (shocking!!), the modern day identity of the Unseelie King, V'Lane and his past, what happened to the Unseelie King's Concubine, etc. I was satisfied with the explanations dark as they were although I can see how some other readers might feel the explanations didn't go far enough and/or that Barrons held out on giving Mac some of the answers she wanted. The author is apparently going to write books about some of the secondary characters so my guess is she's holding back some critical information so she can put it in those books. I don't like the tactic, but I'm probably going to read those books.

At times, the book is confusing because Mac is now so deep in the Silvers and the Fae world. The mythology really takes off in this story. However, there were some scenes that struck me a silly and or pointless like the epilogue. I could have done without that scene. It seemed too much like Mac 1.0. Secondary characters, both new and old, play a more prominent role in this book. I expected to be blown away by the book, but only the first chapter did it for me. The rest of the chapters were merely ok. I expected more scenes between Barrons and Mac, more conversations between them, but I didn't get what I wanted. Overall, I thought the author did a good job of wrapping up the series while keeping true to the characters.

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