Fever Moon: The Fear Dorcha

Which would you like first, the good news or the bad news? I like to end on a positive note, so let's start with the bad news.

Boo:

The artwork is awful. I feel like a jerk saying this, because I read about the absolute love and admiration KMM has for the late Al Rio, but ... no. It's not just that the illustration doesn't match what I imagined, it's that it blatantly doesn't match what has been described to us by KMM throughout the series.

Over the years, we've gotten to know these characters. This va-va-voom character who's almost as tall as Barrons is not Mac. This va-va-voom character with the body of an adult woman is not the 13yo Dani. This bloated toad of a woman is not Rowena. These fae with demonic fingers and toes are not the Seelie described to us over and over again as physical specimens for whom even the adjective “perfect” falls short.

In KMM's introduction to the book, she talks about how this is really Rio's vision. If that's the case, it makes me sad; I can only hope that her own was different and more true, and wish that she had stuck to it. If I wanted this type of adolescent fantasy, Boris Vallejo does it better.

Some of the interactions are also quite strange. Barrons has been toned down and prettied up for an audience unfamiliar with the rest of the series. It takes time to get to know Barrons, so I can understand this choice, but it leaves the rest of us with a diluted facsimile who responds and speaks as we know Barrons never would. Blech.

Yay:

The story of the Fear Dorcha is a very cool one and, despite my aversion to how most of the characters have been realised, I'm glad I read it. The character himself is one of the ones depicted best—creepy and mysterious in all the right ways. He's not alone: the shades are how I envisioned them, as are the rhino boys (save for horn placement) and the grey lady. It's a testament to KMM's descriptive prose and Rio's skill that these characters so closely matched the ones painted on my mental canvas. But that's what makes the deviations all the more disappointing.

The introduction in the beginning and the inside look at character sketches and the *Fever world at the end are themselves worth the price of admission. They kept me from regretting my purchase, but couldn't save the book's rating.

If you can find this on sale, it's worth adding it to your collection for the background info alone; at full price, I wouldn't bother.