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Fever #6
Iced
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Paranormal Fantasy (2012)From #1 New York Times bestselling author Karen Marie Moning comes the first book in her hotly anticipated new urban paranormal trilogy, set in the world of her blockbuster Fever series.
The year is 1 AWC—After the Wall Crash. The Fae are free and hunting us. It’s a war zone out there, and no two days are alike. I’m Dani O’Malley, the chaos-filled streets of Dublin are my home, and there’s no place I’d rather be.
Dani “Mega” O’Malley plays by her own set of rules—and in a world overrun by Dark Fae, her biggest rule is: Do what it takes to survive. Possessing rare talents and the all-powerful Sword of Light, Dani is more than equipped for the task. In fact, she’s one of the rare humans who can defend themselves against the Unseelie. But now, amid the pandemonium, her greatest gifts have turned into serious liabilities.
Dani’s ex–best friend, MacKayla Lane, wants her dead, the terrifying Unseelie princes have put a price on her head, and Inspector Jayne, the head of the police force, is after her sword and will stop at nothing to get it. What’s more, people are being mysteriously frozen to death all over the city, encased on the spot in sub-zero, icy tableaux.
When Dublin’s most seductive nightclub gets blanketed in hoarfrost, Dani finds herself at the mercy of Ryodan, the club’s ruthless, immortal owner. He needs her quick wit and exceptional skill to figure out what’s freezing Fae and humans dead in their tracks—and Ryodan will do anything to ensure her compliance.
Dodging bullets, fangs, and fists, Dani must strike treacherous bargains and make desperate alliances to save her beloved Dublin—before everything and everyone in it gets iced.
The year is 1 AWC—After the Wall Crash. The Fae are free and hunting us. It’s a war zone out there, and no two days are alike. I’m Dani O’Malley, the chaos-filled streets of Dublin are my home, and there’s no place I’d rather be.
Dani “Mega” O’Malley plays by her own set of rules—and in a world overrun by Dark Fae, her biggest rule is: Do what it takes to survive. Possessing rare talents and the all-powerful Sword of Light, Dani is more than equipped for the task. In fact, she’s one of the rare humans who can defend themselves against the Unseelie. But now, amid the pandemonium, her greatest gifts have turned into serious liabilities.
Dani’s ex–best friend, MacKayla Lane, wants her dead, the terrifying Unseelie princes have put a price on her head, and Inspector Jayne, the head of the police force, is after her sword and will stop at nothing to get it. What’s more, people are being mysteriously frozen to death all over the city, encased on the spot in sub-zero, icy tableaux.
When Dublin’s most seductive nightclub gets blanketed in hoarfrost, Dani finds herself at the mercy of Ryodan, the club’s ruthless, immortal owner. He needs her quick wit and exceptional skill to figure out what’s freezing Fae and humans dead in their tracks—and Ryodan will do anything to ensure her compliance.
Dodging bullets, fangs, and fists, Dani must strike treacherous bargains and make desperate alliances to save her beloved Dublin—before everything and everyone in it gets iced.
512 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 29, 2012
About the author
Karen Marie Moning
53 books30.1k followers“The only other calling I ever felt was an irrepressible desire to be Captain of my own Starship. I was born in the wrong century and it wasn’t possible, so I chose to explore the universe by writing fiction instead. Books are doors to endless adventure.” -KMM
Karen Marie Moning is the #1 NYT bestselling author of the Fever Series and Highlander novels.
An alum of the Immaculate Conception Academy, at seventeen she attended Purdue University where she completed a BA in Society & Law, with minors in Philosophy, Creative Writing and Theatre, while working full time as a bartender and computer consultant. She intended to go to law school but after an internship with a firm of Criminal Attorneys, decided against it. For the next decade, she worked in insurance, where she wrote intercompany arbitrations and directed commercial litigation. At the age of thirty, she decided it was time to get serious and do what she’d always wanted to do: write fiction novels.
Beyond the Highland Mist was published in 1999 and nominated for two RITA awards. She then published six more novels in her award-winning HIGHLANDER series, and received the RITA Award in 2001 for The Highlander’s Touch.
In 2004, she began writing the #1 New York Times bestselling FEVER series. The books have been optioned twice for potential franchise development by Twentieth Century Fox and DreamWorks Studios, but the rights are currently held by Moning who has expressed a desire to one day see it as a television series. Her novels have been published in over thirty countries. She divides her time between Ohio and Florida and is working on two future projects for Random House Publishing.
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges
Karen Marie Moning is the #1 NYT bestselling author of the Fever Series and Highlander novels.
An alum of the Immaculate Conception Academy, at seventeen she attended Purdue University where she completed a BA in Society & Law, with minors in Philosophy, Creative Writing and Theatre, while working full time as a bartender and computer consultant. She intended to go to law school but after an internship with a firm of Criminal Attorneys, decided against it. For the next decade, she worked in insurance, where she wrote intercompany arbitrations and directed commercial litigation. At the age of thirty, she decided it was time to get serious and do what she’d always wanted to do: write fiction novels.
Beyond the Highland Mist was published in 1999 and nominated for two RITA awards. She then published six more novels in her award-winning HIGHLANDER series, and received the RITA Award in 2001 for The Highlander’s Touch.
In 2004, she began writing the #1 New York Times bestselling FEVER series. The books have been optioned twice for potential franchise development by Twentieth Century Fox and DreamWorks Studios, but the rights are currently held by Moning who has expressed a desire to one day see it as a television series. Her novels have been published in over thirty countries. She divides her time between Ohio and Florida and is working on two future projects for Random House Publishing.
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” – Jorge Luis Borges
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 4,721 reviews
June 11, 2023
This is over four hundred pages of fourteen year old Dani. Annoying, immature, foul-mouth Dani and her little harem. Yes! There are three guys (so far) head over heels for our fourteen year old Dani. Two grown men and a teenage boy. I have nothing against Dancer, because this is the only character that makes sense in the whole book, but Ryodan and Christian? Insta-lust? For a fourteen year old??
Christian just sees her and decides she’s worth waiting for until she comes of age. And marry her. And have loads of sex with her.
..
This is great.
His girl.
And speaking of creeps, Ryodan wasn’t better off either. Ryodan wants to “hire” her because he can’t do a simple job by himself, even though he’s supposed to be a super duper advanced creature of sort. He abuses Dani without a second thought, fails to form even one logical idea, gets outsmarted by Dancer, a seventeen year old kid, and mostly acts like a douche all the time. What’s up with the attitude? Please don’t say that he’s doing it because he’s in love with Dani. Please.
I won’t pick on Dani because she’s a fourteen year old girl playing the superhero in an adult Urban Fantasy book. But what I can pick on is KMM turning Dani into a veritable Mary Sue. She has all of the sudden captured the attention of all the male population in the city. Possibly the world.
Had to skim through most of it, could barely make myself finish it.
Christian just sees her and decides she’s worth waiting for until she comes of age. And marry her. And have loads of sex with her.
"He knows she’s worth waiting for."
..
"Not for something worth waiting for. Not for a once-in-a-lifetime girl."
This is great.
"My girl is half naked and dying and I can’t get to her!"
His girl.
"But I’d cut the fucking moon out of the sky for her."
"She’s pale and still as death. It’s a disturbing turn-on."
“Butt out of my virginity-losing plans! They’re none of your business.”
“They’re my business and mine alone. But we don’t have to talk about them. Yet.”
And speaking of creeps, Ryodan wasn’t better off either. Ryodan wants to “hire” her because he can’t do a simple job by himself, even though he’s supposed to be a super duper advanced creature of sort. He abuses Dani without a second thought, fails to form even one logical idea, gets outsmarted by Dancer, a seventeen year old kid, and mostly acts like a douche all the time. What’s up with the attitude? Please don’t say that he’s doing it because he’s in love with Dani. Please.
I won’t pick on Dani because she’s a fourteen year old girl playing the superhero in an adult Urban Fantasy book. But what I can pick on is KMM turning Dani into a veritable Mary Sue. She has all of the sudden captured the attention of all the male population in the city. Possibly the world.
Had to skim through most of it, could barely make myself finish it.
November 5, 2012
**My review ended up being a lot more long-winded than I'd expected, hence the main points are in bold.**
Iced was my #1 most anticipated release of 2012, and while it wasn't the biggest disappointment of the year, it comes close.
The beginning is extremely slow. I was excited about being back in KMM's Dublin, but the joy wore off after a while and I wasn't nearly as captivated by this as I was by Darkfever. Nothing seemed to be happening, the narration was dull, and I couldn't bring myself to care about Dani.
While most of the book felt like filler, the last hundred pages or so were completely engrossing and I couldn't stop reading for a second. Even then, however, I found myself skipping entire paragraphs. Dani's voice is simply not as engaging as Mac's was. Her narration is marginally better than it was in Shadowfever, but all the dudes and fecks got on my very last nerve.
Even after finishing Iced, I'm no more familiar with Dani and Ryodan than I was at the beginning of the book, though for entirely different reasons: Dani because we get next to no information about her past and hence can't truly identify with her, and Ryodan because his character is visibly inconsistent. The descriptions about him and his actual behavior are completely at odds with each other.
I like Dani's spirit, but the 14 yo part is unnecessary and should be modified soon, with a time jump or something of the sort. It just doesn't fit with the direction this series is clearly taking when it comes to the romance.
Speaking of which, I'm very disappointed with Christian's character. He's nothing like he was in Fever, and I simply can't get over it. Christian acted so creepy and Edward-like, it still grosses me out every time I think about it. He and Jo are tied for first place in being the Most Deluded Characters Ever.
Even though I foresaw the attraction between Jo and Ryodan in Shadowfever, I'm disappointed by how their relationship is actually playing out. I hate Jo and thought she had a different personality than the lovesick, foolish woman she is in Iced. I couldn't care less who Ryodan screws at this point, but I just hope their sorry excuse for a relationship doesn't play too big of a role later on.
I adore Dancer. He's the only love interest that doesn't make me wanna puke. If Dani ends up with him, KMM will regain my trust and undying fanship. Simply put,
Overall, Iced is an okay start to the trilogy and I'll definitely be reading the rest of the series. The cliffhanger ending doesn't feel cheap, although it was fairly predictable. I haven't completely lost faith in KMM, but I'm not liking where this is headed either.
____________________________________________
Iced: Teaser 1
Iced: Teaser 2
Iced: Teaser 3
Iced: Teaser 4
Iced: Teaser 5
Iced: Teaser 6
Iced: Teaser 7
Iced: Teaser 8
Iced: Teaser 9
Iced: Teaser 10
Iced: Excerpt
Iced: Prologue
Iced: Random Info
Iced: First 27 Pages
**Thanks a bunch to Anna and Yoda for helping me gather them all!**
For more reviews, visit my blog:
Iced was my #1 most anticipated release of 2012, and while it wasn't the biggest disappointment of the year, it comes close.
The beginning is extremely slow. I was excited about being back in KMM's Dublin, but the joy wore off after a while and I wasn't nearly as captivated by this as I was by Darkfever. Nothing seemed to be happening, the narration was dull, and I couldn't bring myself to care about Dani.
While most of the book felt like filler, the last hundred pages or so were completely engrossing and I couldn't stop reading for a second. Even then, however, I found myself skipping entire paragraphs. Dani's voice is simply not as engaging as Mac's was. Her narration is marginally better than it was in Shadowfever, but all the dudes and fecks got on my very last nerve.
Even after finishing Iced, I'm no more familiar with Dani and Ryodan than I was at the beginning of the book, though for entirely different reasons: Dani because we get next to no information about her past and hence can't truly identify with her, and Ryodan because his character is visibly inconsistent. The descriptions about him and his actual behavior are completely at odds with each other.
I like Dani's spirit, but the 14 yo part is unnecessary and should be modified soon, with a time jump or something of the sort. It just doesn't fit with the direction this series is clearly taking when it comes to the romance.
Speaking of which, I'm very disappointed with Christian's character. He's nothing like he was in Fever, and I simply can't get over it. Christian acted so creepy and Edward-like, it still grosses me out every time I think about it. He and Jo are tied for first place in being the Most Deluded Characters Ever.
Even though I foresaw the attraction between Jo and Ryodan in Shadowfever, I'm disappointed by how their relationship is actually playing out. I hate Jo and thought she had a different personality than the lovesick, foolish woman she is in Iced. I couldn't care less who Ryodan screws at this point, but I just hope their sorry excuse for a relationship doesn't play too big of a role later on.
I adore Dancer. He's the only love interest that doesn't make me wanna puke. If Dani ends up with him, KMM will regain my trust and undying fanship. Simply put,
Ryodan+Dani = Been there, done that. Also, creepy as hell.
Christian+Dani = Revolting and disturbing.
Dancer+Dani = Natural and perfect.
Overall, Iced is an okay start to the trilogy and I'll definitely be reading the rest of the series. The cliffhanger ending doesn't feel cheap, although it was fairly predictable. I haven't completely lost faith in KMM, but I'm not liking where this is headed either.
____________________________________________
Iced: Teaser 1
Iced: Teaser 2
Iced: Teaser 3
Iced: Teaser 4
Iced: Teaser 5
Iced: Teaser 6
Iced: Teaser 7
Iced: Teaser 8
Iced: Teaser 9
Iced: Teaser 10
Iced: Excerpt
Iced: Prologue
Iced: Random Info
Iced: First 27 Pages
**Thanks a bunch to Anna and Yoda for helping me gather them all!**
For more reviews, visit my blog:
February 20, 2021
Wow, just wow.
I mean, I remembered it being bad, but I didn’t REALLY remember. 500 pages of Christian and Ryodan perving and fighting over 14-year old Dani is... a lot. I wanted to vom many times. How, how did KMM thought it a good idea to put this shit on page and her publishers - to print it?
Can this series come back for me from this catastrophic low? I don’t know. I’ll give the next one a go, but I am not optimistic.
Stop after book 5 is what I am saying.
I was interested in the plot, so only that saved this from being 1 star.
Updated 12/26/14
It actually left me wanting more. The book would have been much better without all the sexualizing-an-underage-girl nonsense which I am pretty sure KMM regrets herself. She must be tired of explaining why her heroes are not pedophiles. Sorry to say, but they kind of are as they are written in this book. Editing, editing! Someone should have done some more of it for Iced.
As seen on The Readventurer
What is the quickest way to make your intended sexy book absolutely, irrevocably, totally unsexy? Karen Marie Moning has the answer for you - just have your "heroes" act like abusive pedophiles, who love perving all over a scrawny, barely 14-year old girl, have them tell dick jokes around her, crawl into her bed when she is unconscious, lick her and wax poetically about her panties, sexualize this underage girl in every which way, and voila! - your book becomes revolting instead of tantalizing.
Now, I am not going to pretend that I didn't know Moning wasn't exactly a PC writer when it comes to treatment of women - Mac had her share of atrocious, abusive things done to her by a slew of men, including her life mate, in the Fever books, but at least she was a grown-up and could fight back physically, sexually and emotionally. Dani is a child! I seriously question Moning's judgment here. She is definitely no Nabokov to take on a subject so controversial and make something good out of it. She should have stuck to what she knows best and let us, her fans, enjoy a book that is entertaining and fun rather than the one that unnecessarily and thoughtlessly pushes boundaries and makes us gag in the meantime.
What makes me the most annoyed is that the way Iced is plotted, there isn't actually a reason for Dani to be so young and for the story not to take place 5 or even 10 years in future. As the novel opens, post-wall-crash Dublin is in an even more dire situation than at the end of Shadowfever. Not only is our world infested by fae, but something weird is freezing and icing the whole areas of Dublin and beyond. It seems, Ryodan learns first about the ice problem and then decides to recruit Dani to help him investigate it, and does so by quite literally torturing and blackmailing her. (Don't ask me why a millenia-old man with a gang of friends, equally old, smart and experienced in many things fae and human, even needs a help from a teenager. I still don't get it.) So, having no choice, Dani starts investigating, with assistance from her friend Dancer, a 17-year old science geek and the only non-creepy male in the whole story. Lurking about is a pedo fairy Christian, who suddenly and unexpectedly acquires a very unhealthy sexual obsession with Dani.
I personally wasn't that impressed with the first half of Iced. First, there is too much recapping of the Fever story and mythology and second, naturally, too much uncomfortable sexualization of Dani, done mostly by the mega-creep Christian. As far as the mystery of Iced goes, I'd say it's of an average quality for urban fantasy. The new bits of mythology are interesting, but the plot is not as elaborate and twisty as that in the Fever series.
However, the second part is a tad livelier and less offensive (or maybe I just got used to the grossness of it all by then?). That's where the investigation really gets going, we learn more about Dani's past, we see how Cruce is plotting his escape and how Christian's transformation into an Unseelie Prince is progressing, and, most importantly, Christian's sick POV is scaled back. In this second part he is presented in a sort of humorous way, because once we no longer have to be in his head filled with thoughts of sex and odes to his hard member so much, from Dani's POV he is just a pathetic and often laughable psycho.
With that said, I honestly don't know if I can actively recommend Iced. While reading it, I spent too much time trying to imagine Dani was older, so that I didn't have to feel so revolted all the time. But then, judging by the multitude of 5-star reviews of this book, there is a HUGE portion of women who have absolutely no problem with the blatant pedophilia in this book. It's astonishing, really, just how many don't really think anything of it at all, "as long as Dani doesn't actually have sex with anyone." Oh well...
I will probably read the sequel.
I mean, I remembered it being bad, but I didn’t REALLY remember. 500 pages of Christian and Ryodan perving and fighting over 14-year old Dani is... a lot. I wanted to vom many times. How, how did KMM thought it a good idea to put this shit on page and her publishers - to print it?
Can this series come back for me from this catastrophic low? I don’t know. I’ll give the next one a go, but I am not optimistic.
Stop after book 5 is what I am saying.
I was interested in the plot, so only that saved this from being 1 star.
Updated 12/26/14
It actually left me wanting more. The book would have been much better without all the sexualizing-an-underage-girl nonsense which I am pretty sure KMM regrets herself. She must be tired of explaining why her heroes are not pedophiles. Sorry to say, but they kind of are as they are written in this book. Editing, editing! Someone should have done some more of it for Iced.
As seen on The Readventurer
What is the quickest way to make your intended sexy book absolutely, irrevocably, totally unsexy? Karen Marie Moning has the answer for you - just have your "heroes" act like abusive pedophiles, who love perving all over a scrawny, barely 14-year old girl, have them tell dick jokes around her, crawl into her bed when she is unconscious, lick her and wax poetically about her panties, sexualize this underage girl in every which way, and voila! - your book becomes revolting instead of tantalizing.
Now, I am not going to pretend that I didn't know Moning wasn't exactly a PC writer when it comes to treatment of women - Mac had her share of atrocious, abusive things done to her by a slew of men, including her life mate, in the Fever books, but at least she was a grown-up and could fight back physically, sexually and emotionally. Dani is a child! I seriously question Moning's judgment here. She is definitely no Nabokov to take on a subject so controversial and make something good out of it. She should have stuck to what she knows best and let us, her fans, enjoy a book that is entertaining and fun rather than the one that unnecessarily and thoughtlessly pushes boundaries and makes us gag in the meantime.
What makes me the most annoyed is that the way Iced is plotted, there isn't actually a reason for Dani to be so young and for the story not to take place 5 or even 10 years in future. As the novel opens, post-wall-crash Dublin is in an even more dire situation than at the end of Shadowfever. Not only is our world infested by fae, but something weird is freezing and icing the whole areas of Dublin and beyond. It seems, Ryodan learns first about the ice problem and then decides to recruit Dani to help him investigate it, and does so by quite literally torturing and blackmailing her. (Don't ask me why a millenia-old man with a gang of friends, equally old, smart and experienced in many things fae and human, even needs a help from a teenager. I still don't get it.) So, having no choice, Dani starts investigating, with assistance from her friend Dancer, a 17-year old science geek and the only non-creepy male in the whole story. Lurking about is a pedo fairy Christian, who suddenly and unexpectedly acquires a very unhealthy sexual obsession with Dani.
I personally wasn't that impressed with the first half of Iced. First, there is too much recapping of the Fever story and mythology and second, naturally, too much uncomfortable sexualization of Dani, done mostly by the mega-creep Christian. As far as the mystery of Iced goes, I'd say it's of an average quality for urban fantasy. The new bits of mythology are interesting, but the plot is not as elaborate and twisty as that in the Fever series.
However, the second part is a tad livelier and less offensive (or maybe I just got used to the grossness of it all by then?). That's where the investigation really gets going, we learn more about Dani's past, we see how Cruce is plotting his escape and how Christian's transformation into an Unseelie Prince is progressing, and, most importantly, Christian's sick POV is scaled back. In this second part he is presented in a sort of humorous way, because once we no longer have to be in his head filled with thoughts of sex and odes to his hard member so much, from Dani's POV he is just a pathetic and often laughable psycho.
With that said, I honestly don't know if I can actively recommend Iced. While reading it, I spent too much time trying to imagine Dani was older, so that I didn't have to feel so revolted all the time. But then, judging by the multitude of 5-star reviews of this book, there is a HUGE portion of women who have absolutely no problem with the blatant pedophilia in this book. It's astonishing, really, just how many don't really think anything of it at all, "as long as Dani doesn't actually have sex with anyone." Oh well...
I will probably read the sequel.
July 17, 2014
5 stars
7/5/2013 update: a part of Q&A with KMM
Q. Is Dani older in BURNED?
A1. Crimeny, is it really all about sex?
Q. Yes. Now answer my question.
A2. Although Dani is 14 at the beginning of BURNED, she does mature by the end of the book. Someone asked if she would be 17. I said possibly.
Q. Will we get anyone else’s POV in BURNED?
A. Yes. Among others, Mac is back! Which means JZB is, too (but don’t expect his POV, LOL.) To those of you who insisted Mac and Barrons would never have let Dublin get iced because they’re natural born heroes, therefore they should have been on stage and on page…. what did Barrons say? “The world can wait. I can’t.” But seriously, there are reasons you didn’t see them in ICED. There are reasons you will see them in BURNED.
Q. Is Ryodan Dani’s dad?
A. No. No. No.
Q. Is Dani’s father relevant?
A. No.
Q. Do you write about pedophiles?
A. No. I write about life. I write with verisimilitude. I write about men who look at a 14-year old superhero woman-child (who is also an assassin—where is the moral outrage over that? Priorities, the UK would say, get some) and can see the women she will become one day. I write about men who will do anything to keep her alive long enough to become it—even knowing they may never be the one lucky enough to get her. I write about men who know that being gentle and making pleasant requests of a young woman who is stronger, faster, smarter and has more balls than pretty much everyone on the planet would be as effective as trying to chisel a sculpture from stone using feathers. Ryodan never lusts over Dani. Dancer never lusts over Dani. Christian has a few very realistic death-by-sex Fae moments but there is no question he is drawn to her “light’and her ‘innocence’ not the skull and crossbone panties he glimpses when she is freezing to death that ‘charms’ him. Not turns him on. Charms him. Do they have hard dicks? The 9 and death-by-sex Fae always have hard dicks. The wind blows.They breathe. It’s that simple. I was 13 when I first noticed a man looking at me like he wanted to have sex with me. How old were you? Although I didn’t act on it for a long time after that, I remember to this day being thrilled by it. Exhilarated. I was becoming a woman. Dani is an odd duck: raised by TV she has seen everything the world has to offer but experienced very little of it. She gets the actions, not the emotions. Yet.
Part of what may have been difficult for any readers who felt disturbed by the way I wrote the characters in ICED is this: I have always given my reader a way in to the men, a heroine through which the reader could connect on a sexual and romantic level to the Alpha males I write. ICED is the first book I’ve written that does not do that. I gave you no mature eyes through which to experience romance (of which there is none yet.) There is no woman in ICED through which you can comfortably lust after my Alphas. Yet. Stay with me. Keep the faith. This made it difficult for some readers who tried to view the Alphas through Dani’s vantage and felt an ‘ick’ factor. Well, stop it! You weren’t supposed to do that anyway, LOL.
Added, after a discussion 11/4/2012
From the comment section: Regarding Dani's age
As to her age... Well, a few more years would make me more comfortable, but what is a few years compared to forever? It's just there's a limit in our mind from which age and with what age difference sex is appropriate. Even if Dani was 10 years older Ryodan would be millenia older than her. The only thing different would be her maturity, which thanks to the society, world falling apart and her childhood is way ahead our average and what we think of as 14, 15, 16-year-olds (girls into boys, makeup, parties and school). Those few years...It's all in our heads.
Most of the comments people have been making have been in the vein of
A few years could've passed...
It would be easier if Dani was at least 16...
And so on. I'm not saying the hypothetical thought doesn't bother me. It does. But thinking about everything going on... I'm 18 and I've never lived through anything like Dani has( well I did live through a war, protests and stuff, but I was 5 and younger then). I probably have much less life experience than she has. She has been living on her with death around her for 5 years, people. Mac from the first book was probably much more naive and unready for a romantic relationship with a supernatural being. I don't know what a few years would've changed but fit Dani in our view of an Adult and Not jailbait. I don't think it would've changed her much. You can say: when I was 14, I was... My daughter's fifteen and she's not... But, there is a difference in circumstance, Girls used to marry when 14, 15. They had kids. I'm not saying that's ok, now, things are different.
I do understand how and why this is a problem to many (I, too would like to see Dani a bit older before any actual sex scene, so I'm hung up too), I just think we should try to see things from a different POV. Dani's POV. And I still think more people should protest over her SURVIVING ON THE STREETS AND KILLING TO SAVE HERSELF than romance. Are we really so used to that in fiction it doesn't touch us anymore?
Original review
Each book, no matter how good, bad or indifferent teaches you something. This one showed me I could totally argue with self from a different time. Example:
Me prior to Iced: Dani is just FOURTEEN
Me during Iced:Oh, but this is all soooo cool
Prior: I mean she's a kid, and all the men, some of them immortal fighting over her. That's just wrong
During: Oh, she's so clueless, how sweet. I wonder who'll she fall in love with
Prior:JAILBAIT, people
During: Who gives a damn, she sounds...cool and none of it is weird.
Prior: I'm not sure I can like this book.
AFTER: This book is awesome
So, other than teaching me to be schizophrenic, "Iced" was just so fun! I thought I'd have a problem adapting to Dani's voice and language and stuff (based on the sliver we got of it in Shadowfever), but I ended up liking her a lot. Yes, she is young and hormonal and so damn stubborn and impulsive, but she's still easy to connect with, somehow. She embraces life like no character I've read about before. She takes everything as it comes and fights for everything she believes in with everything she's got. No half measures with Dani. Also, we see her growing up a bit at a time. Yes, she already has a lot of life experience, but she learns to take care with her words and actions:
"I’ve always been a speedboat blasting across the whitecaps, thriving on sensation, wind in my hair, salt spray on my face, having the time of my life. Never looking back. Never seeing what happens around or behind me.
These new eyeballs see my wake. They see what I leave behind when I’ve passed.
Boats capsized. People flailing in the waves."
Did I sometimes get the feeling she's too young for all the violence and the love rectangle? Yes, I did. But I found it strange that people didn't worry or that it didn't bug them nearly enough to think about Dan killing and risking her life since the age of 9 than it did to think about men being potentially interested in her.
All I'm going to say is:everything feels right while reading this book. Right and cool and KMM has an amazing gift. Here's something that made me feel a little better about the matter. Christian:
"He sees her like I do: at seventeen, twenty, thirty. Superimposed over the fourteen-year-old, he sees the woman she’ll become."
And Ryodan:
"All the sudden Ryodan’s standing one inch away from me, hand under my chin, holding my face up to his. “You’ll never be just anything. A tsunami can never be ‘just’ a wave.”
“Get off my chin.”
“I like that about you. Waves are banal. Tsunamis reshape the Earth. Under the right circumstances, even entire civilizations.”
I blink.
“You’re going to be one hell of a woman one day, Dani.”
Yes, that did make me feel better about any potential relationship between Dani and either of them. After a few years, of course. At least until she's 16 or 17? And Dancer... Well, he's 17 kind of geeky, smart, cute and her best friend. That's ok, too.
About the guys. I don't know why, but I expected Ryodan to be like a version of Barrons. Kind of like Barrons 2.0. He's not, really. Yes, the tendencies are there. Manipulative, looking straight ahead, getting what he wants at every cost. But he goes about it differently. He's more polished, looks more human? But he's not, really. Anyway, there were a few comparisons made and a few descriptions of him:
"Jericho Barrons is an animal. Pure lawless beast. Not so Ryodan. Dude’s a machine."
"Ryodan is like the ocean. He is what he is. And he’s not about to change. There’s no point in fighting the tide. It ebbs. It flows. You ride it."
Christian... Well, I kind of feel like he's already lost. We saw his POV a few times, and while he still has some human urges and shows flashes of, well, sanity, I grieve for the old Christian. Now, it's like he's wild. And not in a way that felt good to me. Although he genuinely cares for Dani and did some cool things.
Dancer's a boy I would really like in RL. He's just interesting and smart and a great person and friend. And obviously in love with clueless Dani. I swear things just fly over her head. And I'm not annoyed by that. Yay, KMM!
What also flies over her head are innuendos. Seriously, I love those moments. And they makes it more tangible and realistic.
The world kept on spinning and we are now in the world after the Wall came down. Trouble is still brewing, Unseelie still there to be slayed, big, bad WTF monsters out to destroy what's left of the world. I found this interesting. In stories when there's an ending there's always the: what comes after? After Shadowfever there was that for me. Not just because of the walls, but everything., And here we have a plausible sequel to the last minute saving of the world. It's still messed up, with problems and dangerous. There are always consequences. And Bad guys don't always go away.
One thing I would've liked: more Mac and Barrons. Really, glimpses are not enough when it comes to these two. Especially the big bad. I have a hunch, though, that we'll be seeing more of them in the next book. There are a lot of threads to be continued, so I can't wait for it to get out!
And finally a few more quotes, snippets of conversations I found the funniest and the most interesting: Ryodan and Dani:
“I’m not sure you could be any more full of yourself.”
I cut him a smug look. “I’m willing to try.”
“You’re faster than me. That means you’re supposed to yield right of way.”
“Like we’re cars. Cute. I don’t yield. Ever.”
“I can make you feel better than you’ve ever felt in your life.”
“How?”
“There are some secrets, Dani O’Malley, that you learn only by participating.”
ETA
Forgot to say: CLIFFHANGER! Not a huge one, but a cliffhanger all the same. Or better said, like someone cut off the power while you were in the middle of the movie. Everything stopped just as you were getting to the great part, and not when the actor was about to die. That kind of cliffhanger. I think. And hope :D
ETA 2.0, because I was saying someone about the scene, and wanted to put it up.
Just one more thing: a scene that literally made me laugh out loud and which showcases Dani's cluelessness in some things. She acts and thinks older than her age most of the time, so this makes it more real.
“It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.”
“Now there’s a thought,” Lor says.
“If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again,” Ryodan says.
“Just saying, boss,” Lor says. “You can’t tell me you didn’t think it, too.”
I never understand half of what these dudes are talking about and don’t care. “You can touch me if you want to,” I say to Lor magnanimously. I’m so pumped on adrenaline and excitement that I’m feeling downright sociable. I poke one of my shoulders toward him. “Check me out. It feels really cool.”
All heads swivel my way, then they look back at Ryodan.
“He doesn’t own my fecking shoulder. Why you looking at him?”
7/5/2013 update: a part of Q&A with KMM
Q. Is Dani older in BURNED?
A1. Crimeny, is it really all about sex?
Q. Yes. Now answer my question.
A2. Although Dani is 14 at the beginning of BURNED, she does mature by the end of the book. Someone asked if she would be 17. I said possibly.
Q. Will we get anyone else’s POV in BURNED?
A. Yes. Among others, Mac is back! Which means JZB is, too (but don’t expect his POV, LOL.) To those of you who insisted Mac and Barrons would never have let Dublin get iced because they’re natural born heroes, therefore they should have been on stage and on page…. what did Barrons say? “The world can wait. I can’t.” But seriously, there are reasons you didn’t see them in ICED. There are reasons you will see them in BURNED.
Q. Is Ryodan Dani’s dad?
A. No. No. No.
Q. Is Dani’s father relevant?
A. No.
Q. Do you write about pedophiles?
A. No. I write about life. I write with verisimilitude. I write about men who look at a 14-year old superhero woman-child (who is also an assassin—where is the moral outrage over that? Priorities, the UK would say, get some) and can see the women she will become one day. I write about men who will do anything to keep her alive long enough to become it—even knowing they may never be the one lucky enough to get her. I write about men who know that being gentle and making pleasant requests of a young woman who is stronger, faster, smarter and has more balls than pretty much everyone on the planet would be as effective as trying to chisel a sculpture from stone using feathers. Ryodan never lusts over Dani. Dancer never lusts over Dani. Christian has a few very realistic death-by-sex Fae moments but there is no question he is drawn to her “light’and her ‘innocence’ not the skull and crossbone panties he glimpses when she is freezing to death that ‘charms’ him. Not turns him on. Charms him. Do they have hard dicks? The 9 and death-by-sex Fae always have hard dicks. The wind blows.They breathe. It’s that simple. I was 13 when I first noticed a man looking at me like he wanted to have sex with me. How old were you? Although I didn’t act on it for a long time after that, I remember to this day being thrilled by it. Exhilarated. I was becoming a woman. Dani is an odd duck: raised by TV she has seen everything the world has to offer but experienced very little of it. She gets the actions, not the emotions. Yet.
Part of what may have been difficult for any readers who felt disturbed by the way I wrote the characters in ICED is this: I have always given my reader a way in to the men, a heroine through which the reader could connect on a sexual and romantic level to the Alpha males I write. ICED is the first book I’ve written that does not do that. I gave you no mature eyes through which to experience romance (of which there is none yet.) There is no woman in ICED through which you can comfortably lust after my Alphas. Yet. Stay with me. Keep the faith. This made it difficult for some readers who tried to view the Alphas through Dani’s vantage and felt an ‘ick’ factor. Well, stop it! You weren’t supposed to do that anyway, LOL.
Added, after a discussion 11/4/2012
From the comment section: Regarding Dani's age
As to her age... Well, a few more years would make me more comfortable, but what is a few years compared to forever? It's just there's a limit in our mind from which age and with what age difference sex is appropriate. Even if Dani was 10 years older Ryodan would be millenia older than her. The only thing different would be her maturity, which thanks to the society, world falling apart and her childhood is way ahead our average and what we think of as 14, 15, 16-year-olds (girls into boys, makeup, parties and school). Those few years...It's all in our heads.
Most of the comments people have been making have been in the vein of
A few years could've passed...
It would be easier if Dani was at least 16...
And so on. I'm not saying the hypothetical thought doesn't bother me. It does. But thinking about everything going on... I'm 18 and I've never lived through anything like Dani has( well I did live through a war, protests and stuff, but I was 5 and younger then). I probably have much less life experience than she has. She has been living on her with death around her for 5 years, people. Mac from the first book was probably much more naive and unready for a romantic relationship with a supernatural being. I don't know what a few years would've changed but fit Dani in our view of an Adult and Not jailbait. I don't think it would've changed her much. You can say: when I was 14, I was... My daughter's fifteen and she's not... But, there is a difference in circumstance, Girls used to marry when 14, 15. They had kids. I'm not saying that's ok, now, things are different.
I do understand how and why this is a problem to many (I, too would like to see Dani a bit older before any actual sex scene, so I'm hung up too), I just think we should try to see things from a different POV. Dani's POV. And I still think more people should protest over her SURVIVING ON THE STREETS AND KILLING TO SAVE HERSELF than romance. Are we really so used to that in fiction it doesn't touch us anymore?
Original review
Each book, no matter how good, bad or indifferent teaches you something. This one showed me I could totally argue with self from a different time. Example:
Me prior to Iced: Dani is just FOURTEEN
Me during Iced:Oh, but this is all soooo cool
Prior: I mean she's a kid, and all the men, some of them immortal fighting over her. That's just wrong
During: Oh, she's so clueless, how sweet. I wonder who'll she fall in love with
Prior:JAILBAIT, people
During: Who gives a damn, she sounds...cool and none of it is weird.
Prior: I'm not sure I can like this book.
AFTER: This book is awesome
So, other than teaching me to be schizophrenic, "Iced" was just so fun! I thought I'd have a problem adapting to Dani's voice and language and stuff (based on the sliver we got of it in Shadowfever), but I ended up liking her a lot. Yes, she is young and hormonal and so damn stubborn and impulsive, but she's still easy to connect with, somehow. She embraces life like no character I've read about before. She takes everything as it comes and fights for everything she believes in with everything she's got. No half measures with Dani. Also, we see her growing up a bit at a time. Yes, she already has a lot of life experience, but she learns to take care with her words and actions:
"I’ve always been a speedboat blasting across the whitecaps, thriving on sensation, wind in my hair, salt spray on my face, having the time of my life. Never looking back. Never seeing what happens around or behind me.
These new eyeballs see my wake. They see what I leave behind when I’ve passed.
Boats capsized. People flailing in the waves."
Did I sometimes get the feeling she's too young for all the violence and the love rectangle? Yes, I did. But I found it strange that people didn't worry or that it didn't bug them nearly enough to think about Dan killing and risking her life since the age of 9 than it did to think about men being potentially interested in her.
All I'm going to say is:everything feels right while reading this book. Right and cool and KMM has an amazing gift. Here's something that made me feel a little better about the matter. Christian:
"He sees her like I do: at seventeen, twenty, thirty. Superimposed over the fourteen-year-old, he sees the woman she’ll become."
And Ryodan:
"All the sudden Ryodan’s standing one inch away from me, hand under my chin, holding my face up to his. “You’ll never be just anything. A tsunami can never be ‘just’ a wave.”
“Get off my chin.”
“I like that about you. Waves are banal. Tsunamis reshape the Earth. Under the right circumstances, even entire civilizations.”
I blink.
“You’re going to be one hell of a woman one day, Dani.”
Yes, that did make me feel better about any potential relationship between Dani and either of them. After a few years, of course. At least until she's 16 or 17? And Dancer... Well, he's 17 kind of geeky, smart, cute and her best friend. That's ok, too.
About the guys. I don't know why, but I expected Ryodan to be like a version of Barrons. Kind of like Barrons 2.0. He's not, really. Yes, the tendencies are there. Manipulative, looking straight ahead, getting what he wants at every cost. But he goes about it differently. He's more polished, looks more human? But he's not, really. Anyway, there were a few comparisons made and a few descriptions of him:
"Jericho Barrons is an animal. Pure lawless beast. Not so Ryodan. Dude’s a machine."
"Ryodan is like the ocean. He is what he is. And he’s not about to change. There’s no point in fighting the tide. It ebbs. It flows. You ride it."
Christian... Well, I kind of feel like he's already lost. We saw his POV a few times, and while he still has some human urges and shows flashes of, well, sanity, I grieve for the old Christian. Now, it's like he's wild. And not in a way that felt good to me. Although he genuinely cares for Dani and did some cool things.
Dancer's a boy I would really like in RL. He's just interesting and smart and a great person and friend. And obviously in love with clueless Dani. I swear things just fly over her head. And I'm not annoyed by that. Yay, KMM!
What also flies over her head are innuendos. Seriously, I love those moments. And they makes it more tangible and realistic.
The world kept on spinning and we are now in the world after the Wall came down. Trouble is still brewing, Unseelie still there to be slayed, big, bad WTF monsters out to destroy what's left of the world. I found this interesting. In stories when there's an ending there's always the: what comes after? After Shadowfever there was that for me. Not just because of the walls, but everything., And here we have a plausible sequel to the last minute saving of the world. It's still messed up, with problems and dangerous. There are always consequences. And Bad guys don't always go away.
One thing I would've liked: more Mac and Barrons. Really, glimpses are not enough when it comes to these two. Especially the big bad. I have a hunch, though, that we'll be seeing more of them in the next book. There are a lot of threads to be continued, so I can't wait for it to get out!
And finally a few more quotes, snippets of conversations I found the funniest and the most interesting: Ryodan and Dani:
“I’m not sure you could be any more full of yourself.”
I cut him a smug look. “I’m willing to try.”
“You’re faster than me. That means you’re supposed to yield right of way.”
“Like we’re cars. Cute. I don’t yield. Ever.”
“I can make you feel better than you’ve ever felt in your life.”
“How?”
“There are some secrets, Dani O’Malley, that you learn only by participating.”
ETA
Forgot to say: CLIFFHANGER! Not a huge one, but a cliffhanger all the same. Or better said, like someone cut off the power while you were in the middle of the movie. Everything stopped just as you were getting to the great part, and not when the actor was about to die. That kind of cliffhanger. I think. And hope :D
ETA 2.0, because I was saying someone about the scene, and wanted to put it up.
Just one more thing: a scene that literally made me laugh out loud and which showcases Dani's cluelessness in some things. She acts and thinks older than her age most of the time, so this makes it more real.
“It happens when I get really excited. The more excited I get, the more I vibrate.”
“Now there’s a thought,” Lor says.
“If you mean what I think you mean, you want to shut the fuck up and never think it again,” Ryodan says.
“Just saying, boss,” Lor says. “You can’t tell me you didn’t think it, too.”
I never understand half of what these dudes are talking about and don’t care. “You can touch me if you want to,” I say to Lor magnanimously. I’m so pumped on adrenaline and excitement that I’m feeling downright sociable. I poke one of my shoulders toward him. “Check me out. It feels really cool.”
All heads swivel my way, then they look back at Ryodan.
“He doesn’t own my fecking shoulder. Why you looking at him?”
September 4, 2014
So... here it is. The much-anticipated spin-off of the Fever series told from the point of view of Dani O'Malley and carried on from almost exactly the point where Shadowfever finishes. I have to say, as much as I wanted this to be good, I'm actually surprised by how much I enjoyed the story and how much higher my opinion is of Dani after finishing it. I've read a few reviews from disappointed goodreaders but - apart from one standout issue - I thankfully do not share a lot of the concerns floating around. And I am very excited for the next installment, even more so because Moning's claim in an interview that this book doesn't finish with a cliffhanger is basically a complete lie.
Okay, let's start with Dani. She's still as bratty as ever and loves to throw around words like "dude" and "feck", but KMM followed through on her promise that her "voice" wouldn't be as loud and in-your-face in this because she is the main character and didn't need to be quite so colourful in order to stand out. And I actually really like her. Any annoyance I felt for her in the past quickly gave way to amusement at her snarky quips and the occasional head shake at her crazy naivete. However, I think Moning will need to develop her character throughout the next two books and allow her to mature or her tendency to go rushing arrogantly into every situation will become frustrating.
As for the story, I really enjoyed the mystery in Iced and the solving of it was quite an adventure. Basically, Ryodan "asks" for Dani's help in finding out what is causing seemingly random venues and places to become iced over, freezing anyone in the vicinity, and eventually exploding afterwards. Several characters are pulled into this mess and tensions are high as the whole city of Dublin becomes threatened by the possibility of being entirely frozen over. On top of all this chaos, Christian MacKeltar has become an Unseelie prince and developed a strange obsession with Dani.
Contrary to a few other GR members' opinions, I did not find this book particularly romance-y at all. There was quite a bit of male-posturing going on, but at the end of this book I'm still unsure who KMM intends the main love interest to be. Every time I think I've made my mind up, somebody else does something that makes the novel kind of favour them. But I like this, it's not a love triangle or love anything because nothing like that has happened yet, but I'm not filled with the same certainty that two characters will end up together like I usually am in paranormal novels with romance in them. However, this does kind of lead straight on to the thing that made me cringe slightly (okay, a lot)...
Dani's age. Okay, scratch that, it's actually more the age of the men she interacts with (except Dancer). At fourteen years old, it's completely natural for Dani to think about sex and, even though she is underage, the thought of fourteen year olds having sex does not fill me with the horror it fills some people with. But when I think of fourteen year olds having sex, I mean with other fourteen year olds. Or fifteen year olds. Not men who are a) thousands of years old and b) even in their human form/appearance are supposed to appear over thirty.
And I don't know if KMM has plans for Dani and Ryodan to get it on or not, but the implied sexual tension between them during parts of Iced grossed me out a little. Ryodan himself is growing on me, I think, let's just say I'm more interested in him now than I was before but I'm not entirely sure if I like him or not yet. But, interesting as he may be, the thought of him perving on a fourteen year old girl makes me feel icky. There was a suggestion in there somewhere that he may be "waiting" for Dani, which may sound really cute to some people but it sounded like grooming to me. Creepy.
But, as the four stars should indicate, this isn't as big an issue as I've probably made it seem. There is no sex, no kissing, not even anything between Dani and Ryodan that you could exactly call flirting, but it's a thing that's there and the worst part about it is that sometimes during Iced I was thinking "wow, they might be hot together" until suddenly I remember she's fourteen and I quickly shove the thought away. Assuming KMM is going that way, she needs to get him to stop calling her "kid" asap. But, who knows, maybe Dani will go for the least morally questionable option and end up with Dancer.
Deep, thoughtful sex analysis aside, this book was entertaining through and through for me. As with the other five Fever novels, it is interspersed with scenes of humour amid the action and the dialogue is as witty and fabulous as it was in the good old Mac and Barrons days. I only hope all the other Fever fans enjoy this as much as I did!
Okay, let's start with Dani. She's still as bratty as ever and loves to throw around words like "dude" and "feck", but KMM followed through on her promise that her "voice" wouldn't be as loud and in-your-face in this because she is the main character and didn't need to be quite so colourful in order to stand out. And I actually really like her. Any annoyance I felt for her in the past quickly gave way to amusement at her snarky quips and the occasional head shake at her crazy naivete. However, I think Moning will need to develop her character throughout the next two books and allow her to mature or her tendency to go rushing arrogantly into every situation will become frustrating.
As for the story, I really enjoyed the mystery in Iced and the solving of it was quite an adventure. Basically, Ryodan "asks" for Dani's help in finding out what is causing seemingly random venues and places to become iced over, freezing anyone in the vicinity, and eventually exploding afterwards. Several characters are pulled into this mess and tensions are high as the whole city of Dublin becomes threatened by the possibility of being entirely frozen over. On top of all this chaos, Christian MacKeltar has become an Unseelie prince and developed a strange obsession with Dani.
Contrary to a few other GR members' opinions, I did not find this book particularly romance-y at all. There was quite a bit of male-posturing going on, but at the end of this book I'm still unsure who KMM intends the main love interest to be. Every time I think I've made my mind up, somebody else does something that makes the novel kind of favour them. But I like this, it's not a love triangle or love anything because nothing like that has happened yet, but I'm not filled with the same certainty that two characters will end up together like I usually am in paranormal novels with romance in them. However, this does kind of lead straight on to the thing that made me cringe slightly (okay, a lot)...
Dani's age. Okay, scratch that, it's actually more the age of the men she interacts with (except Dancer). At fourteen years old, it's completely natural for Dani to think about sex and, even though she is underage, the thought of fourteen year olds having sex does not fill me with the horror it fills some people with. But when I think of fourteen year olds having sex, I mean with other fourteen year olds. Or fifteen year olds. Not men who are a) thousands of years old and b) even in their human form/appearance are supposed to appear over thirty.
And I don't know if KMM has plans for Dani and Ryodan to get it on or not, but the implied sexual tension between them during parts of Iced grossed me out a little. Ryodan himself is growing on me, I think, let's just say I'm more interested in him now than I was before but I'm not entirely sure if I like him or not yet. But, interesting as he may be, the thought of him perving on a fourteen year old girl makes me feel icky. There was a suggestion in there somewhere that he may be "waiting" for Dani, which may sound really cute to some people but it sounded like grooming to me. Creepy.
But, as the four stars should indicate, this isn't as big an issue as I've probably made it seem. There is no sex, no kissing, not even anything between Dani and Ryodan that you could exactly call flirting, but it's a thing that's there and the worst part about it is that sometimes during Iced I was thinking "wow, they might be hot together" until suddenly I remember she's fourteen and I quickly shove the thought away. Assuming KMM is going that way, she needs to get him to stop calling her "kid" asap. But, who knows, maybe Dani will go for the least morally questionable option and end up with Dancer.
Deep, thoughtful sex analysis aside, this book was entertaining through and through for me. As with the other five Fever novels, it is interspersed with scenes of humour amid the action and the dialogue is as witty and fabulous as it was in the good old Mac and Barrons days. I only hope all the other Fever fans enjoy this as much as I did!
March 27, 2013
This is not really a review but more of a reaction. Let me be clear, I love how Karen Marie Moning (from here on out referred to as KMM because Karen Marie Moning is simply too long to keep writing) writes. I enjoy the way she crafts characters and the world she builds. KMM is able to write characters that even when I don't like them, I want to keep reading. And that happened with Iced. I wasn't invested in the story, I was mildly bored by the storyline but I still felt compelled to keep going. There is just something about the way she writes her stories.
There is absolutely no way that it is ever acceptable for a 14 year old girl to turn into a romantic or sexual object. Sexualization of girls is rampant in our culture and the girls themselves feel the pressure to rise up and meet this standard. I have a 13 year old, she plays on a soccer team with 13, 14 and 15 year olds. I have gotten the pleasure of hanging out with the team, watching my husband coach them and listening to their conversations. Let me make this clear, a 14 year old is still a child. As I read this novel, I kept remembering my daughter and her soccer teammates -- their silly conversations, their reactions to situations and my understanding that they are still children.
There is no question that Dani is still a child. I have read the arguments against the idea that Dani is a child by saying that she survives, she kills to survive and well I strongly disagree. Many children all over the world have had to do horrible things just to survive, this doesn't mean that because they can survive they should then be sexually harassed and the object of sexualization by much older men with enormous power. And as if the situation wasn't bad enough, I believe Dani is emotionally immature for her age. KMM writes Dani as if she is emotionally younger than 14. Dani refers to herself in the third person. She considers herself a superhero. She has immature aspirations for herself. She is unable to handle consequences and face up to her actions (e.g. her running all over Dublin to avoid Mac). And a further example that Dani is absolutely not ready to be the object of two older men's sexual attention is that .... she doesn't want their sexual attention. As the story is written, Dani is repeatedly uncomfortable with either Christian's or Ryo's advances. Dani is uncomfortable with the idea of sex in real life and very uncomfortable with any nuanced sexual comment. I keep wondering, hoping and praying that what is happening here is that we are supposed to be disgusted with Ryo and Christian. That Dani is reacting negatively to them and following her instincts because the storyline is NOT going toward a perverted older man who gets off on children. Please let it be like that.
And what happened to Christian? :( I have an extreme soft-spot for the MacKeltars. Christian was always my favorite in the Fever series (yes I liked him even more than Barrons, not necessarily for Mac, but just as a male character). I know that KMM has the right as the author to do what she wants with any of her characters, but I just don't buy into what is happening to Christian. I don't accept that the MacKeltars wouldn't be tracking him down. And what is really eating at me about the entire Christian storyline is that it is so similar to what happened to Dageaus in the Dark Highlander except that it was better done in the Dark Highlander.
One more thing, I don't accept that Ryo is stronger and perhaps more clever than Barrons. So anyway, there is my take on Iced and I doubt if I will read the next one in the series.
There is absolutely no way that it is ever acceptable for a 14 year old girl to turn into a romantic or sexual object. Sexualization of girls is rampant in our culture and the girls themselves feel the pressure to rise up and meet this standard. I have a 13 year old, she plays on a soccer team with 13, 14 and 15 year olds. I have gotten the pleasure of hanging out with the team, watching my husband coach them and listening to their conversations. Let me make this clear, a 14 year old is still a child. As I read this novel, I kept remembering my daughter and her soccer teammates -- their silly conversations, their reactions to situations and my understanding that they are still children.
There is no question that Dani is still a child. I have read the arguments against the idea that Dani is a child by saying that she survives, she kills to survive and well I strongly disagree. Many children all over the world have had to do horrible things just to survive, this doesn't mean that because they can survive they should then be sexually harassed and the object of sexualization by much older men with enormous power. And as if the situation wasn't bad enough, I believe Dani is emotionally immature for her age. KMM writes Dani as if she is emotionally younger than 14. Dani refers to herself in the third person. She considers herself a superhero. She has immature aspirations for herself. She is unable to handle consequences and face up to her actions (e.g. her running all over Dublin to avoid Mac). And a further example that Dani is absolutely not ready to be the object of two older men's sexual attention is that .... she doesn't want their sexual attention. As the story is written, Dani is repeatedly uncomfortable with either Christian's or Ryo's advances. Dani is uncomfortable with the idea of sex in real life and very uncomfortable with any nuanced sexual comment. I keep wondering, hoping and praying that what is happening here is that we are supposed to be disgusted with Ryo and Christian. That Dani is reacting negatively to them and following her instincts because the storyline is NOT going toward a perverted older man who gets off on children. Please let it be like that.
And what happened to Christian? :( I have an extreme soft-spot for the MacKeltars. Christian was always my favorite in the Fever series (yes I liked him even more than Barrons, not necessarily for Mac, but just as a male character). I know that KMM has the right as the author to do what she wants with any of her characters, but I just don't buy into what is happening to Christian. I don't accept that the MacKeltars wouldn't be tracking him down. And what is really eating at me about the entire Christian storyline is that it is so similar to what happened to Dageaus in the Dark Highlander except that it was better done in the Dark Highlander.
One more thing, I don't accept that Ryo is stronger and perhaps more clever than Barrons. So anyway, there is my take on Iced and I doubt if I will read the next one in the series.
January 26, 2016
I picked this book up a million times over the last 3 years before I was FINALLY able to finish it. I reread the entire series in order to understand everything properly. Honestly, she should have wrapped the series up in Shadowfever.
Dani was so bloody annoying the entire time, I mean ok, I can overlook that due to her being portrayed as a 14 year old, but does she have to be so fecking full of herself, Dani "Mega" O'Malley, ugh. And what is with literally everyone falling in love with Dani? And Ryodan's non-question mark questions got on my nerves. It looked like they were trying to recreate Barrons and Mac through Ryodan and Dani, but just coming off as pedophilic.
To be honest, the plot wasn't really interesting either along with these character's annoyances. It wasn't as developed and elaborate as was the case with Sinsar Dubh, but even more so didn't really make sense, with the "sonic boom" and shit. Probably the only really interesting part was the Crimson Hag and the only reason I want to even read the next book is to find out what happened with that.
Dani was so bloody annoying the entire time, I mean ok, I can overlook that due to her being portrayed as a 14 year old, but does she have to be so fecking full of herself, Dani "Mega" O'Malley, ugh. And what is with literally everyone falling in love with Dani? And Ryodan's non-question mark questions got on my nerves. It looked like they were trying to recreate Barrons and Mac through Ryodan and Dani, but just coming off as pedophilic.
To be honest, the plot wasn't really interesting either along with these character's annoyances. It wasn't as developed and elaborate as was the case with Sinsar Dubh, but even more so didn't really make sense, with the "sonic boom" and shit. Probably the only really interesting part was the Crimson Hag and the only reason I want to even read the next book is to find out what happened with that.
November 17, 2020
Dani gets a lot of criticism, but I honestly think it's undue. She's a great heroine, and definitely unique for the genre. In a horde of urban fantasy women, she stands out.
I love the way that Dani's superpowers manifest in her personality. She can run like the wind, and also talks and thinks a million miles a minute. She backs up her superstrength with an ego the size of a skyscraper. And with her heightened senses comes a heightened sense of responsibility to fix the problems she observes. Dani's brilliant characterization speaks to how much KMM's authoring skills have improved since Beyond the Highland Mist.
Beyond those quirks, Dani is your average headstrong teenager, trying to get by in a world torn apart by Faerie. Iced picks up about half a year after the fall of the walls between Earth and Faerie, when a third of the human population was wiped out in a matter of days. Dani acts as Dublin's resident superhero, helping the remaining inhabitants with problems of the fey kind and posting "Dani Dailys" every few days to keep people informed of current dangers. She is roped, entirely unwilling, into working for Ryodan, one of the Nine and owner of the club Chester's.
Ryodan is, in one word, problematic. Not that he's any more domineering, unreasonable, and immoral than Barrons was in the Fever series; but his faults are much harder to accept than Barrons' because he is being set up as Dani's love interest. First off, I can't see Dani ever falling in love with someone who demands power over her, because she is far too independent for that sort of relationship. Pitching a romance between these two characters doesn't make sense.
Moreover, Dani is barely fourteen in Iced! Yet Ryodan is always saying creepy shit to her. He seems to have a hard-on for "the woman she'll become". Even if he says he'll wait for Dani to grow up, that's still intensely pervy.
Christian, on the other hand, is a character I can support. Don't get me wrong - he is intensely creepy and more than a little nutty. Christian makes the full transition from human to Unseelie prince over the course of the book and gets progressively less sane, especially in his interactions with Dani. He also says some very gross things to her, occasionally talking about how he'll take her virginity and make her his queen and so on. But overall, I think Christian is a very compelling character. He starts out as an everyday hero, but we get to watch his downfall as becomes less and less human and more evil. He has one of the most interesting character arcs in the whole Fever series.
The difference between Christian's and Ryodan's advances is the tone the book takes towards their behavior. The tone towards Christian is decidedly negative. It's clear that Christian is going insane and losing out to his Unseelie side; Unseelie princes have consistently been characterized as rapists, violent assholes, as enemies. Nobody - not the author, not the characters, not even Christian's own human nature - condones his behavior towards Dani.
Ryodan is a different story. Unfortunately. The plot focuses quite a bit on the evolution of Dani's regard for Ryodan, and she's already attracted to him. She accidentally walks in on him in the nude, and can't stop thinking about it for the rest of the book. Everything about the plot and tone points towards the eventual romance between them, which means that KMM thinks that Ryodan's behavior towards Dani is acceptable, possibly even romantic. Which it is NOT. Nothing a grown man does to a fourteen-year-old girl should ever be construed as romantic.
That's why I can't get behind a Ryodan/Dani ship, no matter how old she is in following books. If Ryodan isn't above panting after a young teenager, he shouldn't be set up as a love interest. Ever.
This was my second time reading Iced, following a full reread of The Fever Series. I'm debating whether I should chug through Burned a second time in order to read the remaining three books of Dani's plot (Feverborn, Feversong, and High Voltage). I hated Burned, but closure for Dani's story would be great. Any advice?
tl;dr: Dani is awesome. Ryodan is gross. Christian is evil but interesting.
I love the way that Dani's superpowers manifest in her personality. She can run like the wind, and also talks and thinks a million miles a minute. She backs up her superstrength with an ego the size of a skyscraper. And with her heightened senses comes a heightened sense of responsibility to fix the problems she observes. Dani's brilliant characterization speaks to how much KMM's authoring skills have improved since Beyond the Highland Mist.
Beyond those quirks, Dani is your average headstrong teenager, trying to get by in a world torn apart by Faerie. Iced picks up about half a year after the fall of the walls between Earth and Faerie, when a third of the human population was wiped out in a matter of days. Dani acts as Dublin's resident superhero, helping the remaining inhabitants with problems of the fey kind and posting "Dani Dailys" every few days to keep people informed of current dangers. She is roped, entirely unwilling, into working for Ryodan, one of the Nine and owner of the club Chester's.
Ryodan is, in one word, problematic. Not that he's any more domineering, unreasonable, and immoral than Barrons was in the Fever series; but his faults are much harder to accept than Barrons' because he is being set up as Dani's love interest. First off, I can't see Dani ever falling in love with someone who demands power over her, because she is far too independent for that sort of relationship. Pitching a romance between these two characters doesn't make sense.
Moreover, Dani is barely fourteen in Iced! Yet Ryodan is always saying creepy shit to her. He seems to have a hard-on for "the woman she'll become". Even if he says he'll wait for Dani to grow up, that's still intensely pervy.
Christian, on the other hand, is a character I can support. Don't get me wrong - he is intensely creepy and more than a little nutty. Christian makes the full transition from human to Unseelie prince over the course of the book and gets progressively less sane, especially in his interactions with Dani. He also says some very gross things to her, occasionally talking about how he'll take her virginity and make her his queen and so on. But overall, I think Christian is a very compelling character. He starts out as an everyday hero, but we get to watch his downfall as becomes less and less human and more evil. He has one of the most interesting character arcs in the whole Fever series.
The difference between Christian's and Ryodan's advances is the tone the book takes towards their behavior. The tone towards Christian is decidedly negative. It's clear that Christian is going insane and losing out to his Unseelie side; Unseelie princes have consistently been characterized as rapists, violent assholes, as enemies. Nobody - not the author, not the characters, not even Christian's own human nature - condones his behavior towards Dani.
Ryodan is a different story. Unfortunately. The plot focuses quite a bit on the evolution of Dani's regard for Ryodan, and she's already attracted to him. She accidentally walks in on him in the nude, and can't stop thinking about it for the rest of the book. Everything about the plot and tone points towards the eventual romance between them, which means that KMM thinks that Ryodan's behavior towards Dani is acceptable, possibly even romantic. Which it is NOT. Nothing a grown man does to a fourteen-year-old girl should ever be construed as romantic.
That's why I can't get behind a Ryodan/Dani ship, no matter how old she is in following books. If Ryodan isn't above panting after a young teenager, he shouldn't be set up as a love interest. Ever.
This was my second time reading Iced, following a full reread of The Fever Series. I'm debating whether I should chug through Burned a second time in order to read the remaining three books of Dani's plot (Feverborn, Feversong, and High Voltage). I hated Burned, but closure for Dani's story would be great. Any advice?
tl;dr: Dani is awesome. Ryodan is gross. Christian is evil but interesting.
June 28, 2022
6 December 2015: $1.99 on Kindle
23 December 2014 update:
Because I said I could sum up everything important that happens in the book in a few short sentences (and did in a comment below), I figured I'd add it to my review. Serious spoilers below for the entirety of the book:
24 September 2014 update (Cover rant):
Yep, that makes it clear it's not about the sex, doesn't it? This new cover totally says that the story is ALL about Dani, right? Doesn't it? I need to unfollow her on facebook before I get really irritated.
Original review:
Okay, I finally went through and gathered my thoughts, from when I first read it, and from discussing it throughout the past year+ with friends.
I've put off writing this review, or even rating this book, since I first read it in 2012. You have to understand where I'm coming from, the Fever series was something I spent FIVE long years reading, rereading, speculating, discussing, and waiting for the completion. And it was beautiful, perfect...EPIC. I loved it. Even now that it's finished it remains at the top of my favorites list. The scope and ability that KMM showed in that novel blew my mind.
I had reservations about Dani. I couldn't stand her voice in Dreamfever and Shadowfever. Feck and Dude was every other word, it felt like, and I wasn't looking forward to reading a whole book of it. But she was believably a teenager.
Then I opened Iced and was surprised as hell to find out that I didn't hate Dani. I began to get to know her, to understand her, and her voice was so much different than what I'd previously read that I settled in hoping that my fears were mislaid.
Surprisingly, to me, I actually liked Dani. I don't love her yet, but I could see that happening. There are things she did that irritated the hell out of me, but she's an incredible character - tough and bitten, naive and innocent - rolled into one, believably.
Unfortunately, because there's been no change in age or growth from when we knew her in the Fever series I can't help but feel like KMM changed her to suit her purposes. There's no reason that her voice would change this much considering Iced picks up before Shadowfever even ends. So, while I was relieved and happy that I liked Dani, I was also skeptical about the authorial intent...and worried about what other characters would change to suit their new purpose (with good reason it turns out).
The "mystery" (these are supposed to be episodic books, with a "monster of the week" type of storyline) in this book was weak. Honestly pretty boring and I didn't give a crap about it for most of the story. Up until the last 20%, when it had me riveted, and the climax fight scene was fantastic
And now we're going to come to my main problem. The sexualization of a FOURTEEN year old girl by TWO GROWN ASS MEN. I can't really get into it without spoilers, and the rest of my complaints involve spoilers as well, so read on at your own risk.
I did enjoy some smaller aspects of it. There's some food shortage issues that I'm interested in seeing more about. The world itself is interesting as hell, still. But I'm afraid to see the characters I know and love destroyed, turned into lesser versions of themselves. I'm going to read the next one, and hope and pray that KMM gets back on track...but I'll probably wait until Jenny's read it and given me a run-down (that she promised :P)
Here's a Q&A with KMM after Iced was released. I'm going to highlight the parts the infuriate me the most. But be warned again. Spoilers ahead.
*And then there's this where KMM says Ryodan will "eclipse Barrons".
Why's he gotta be more than Barrons? Why can't he just be different? Why do I get the feeling this means that there's a Dani/Ryodan HEA in the works?
I do have some theories/speculations that I could go on about where things would turn and make me happy again, satisfied. But I don't know if I can bear to hope for them to happen. I don't foresee any scenario in which I'm happy with Ryodan and Dani ending up together.
Here are a couple of fantastic reviews that I agree with 100%: bean and Cory and Jenny
This doesn't deserve 1 star.
Previous thoughts:
I don't know what to say, I don't know how to review this, I don't even really know what to rate this. I'm leaning towards 2.5 stars right now
I'm just... *sigh*
This was seriously a let-down. Some good parts, some parts that make me curious/think, but overall - a lot kind of left me feeling gross or angry, and the rest bored me to tears.
23 December 2014 update:
Because I said I could sum up everything important that happens in the book in a few short sentences (and did in a comment below), I figured I'd add it to my review. Serious spoilers below for the entirety of the book:
24 September 2014 update (Cover rant):
Yep, that makes it clear it's not about the sex, doesn't it? This new cover totally says that the story is ALL about Dani, right? Doesn't it? I need to unfollow her on facebook before I get really irritated.
Original review:
Okay, I finally went through and gathered my thoughts, from when I first read it, and from discussing it throughout the past year+ with friends.
I've put off writing this review, or even rating this book, since I first read it in 2012. You have to understand where I'm coming from, the Fever series was something I spent FIVE long years reading, rereading, speculating, discussing, and waiting for the completion. And it was beautiful, perfect...EPIC. I loved it. Even now that it's finished it remains at the top of my favorites list. The scope and ability that KMM showed in that novel blew my mind.
I had reservations about Dani. I couldn't stand her voice in Dreamfever and Shadowfever. Feck and Dude was every other word, it felt like, and I wasn't looking forward to reading a whole book of it. But she was believably a teenager.
Then I opened Iced and was surprised as hell to find out that I didn't hate Dani. I began to get to know her, to understand her, and her voice was so much different than what I'd previously read that I settled in hoping that my fears were mislaid.
Surprisingly, to me, I actually liked Dani. I don't love her yet, but I could see that happening. There are things she did that irritated the hell out of me, but she's an incredible character - tough and bitten, naive and innocent - rolled into one, believably.
Unfortunately, because there's been no change in age or growth from when we knew her in the Fever series I can't help but feel like KMM changed her to suit her purposes. There's no reason that her voice would change this much considering Iced picks up before Shadowfever even ends. So, while I was relieved and happy that I liked Dani, I was also skeptical about the authorial intent...and worried about what other characters would change to suit their new purpose (with good reason it turns out).
The "mystery" (these are supposed to be episodic books, with a "monster of the week" type of storyline) in this book was weak. Honestly pretty boring and I didn't give a crap about it for most of the story. Up until the last 20%, when it had me riveted, and the climax fight scene was fantastic
And now we're going to come to my main problem. The sexualization of a FOURTEEN year old girl by TWO GROWN ASS MEN. I can't really get into it without spoilers, and the rest of my complaints involve spoilers as well, so read on at your own risk.
I did enjoy some smaller aspects of it. There's some food shortage issues that I'm interested in seeing more about. The world itself is interesting as hell, still. But I'm afraid to see the characters I know and love destroyed, turned into lesser versions of themselves. I'm going to read the next one, and hope and pray that KMM gets back on track...but I'll probably wait until Jenny's read it and given me a run-down (that she promised :P)
Here's a Q&A with KMM after Iced was released. I'm going to highlight the parts the infuriate me the most. But be warned again. Spoilers ahead.
*And then there's this where KMM says Ryodan will "eclipse Barrons".
One last note about Ryodan: He will eclipse Barrons. Blot him right out of your soul’s sky.
Why's he gotta be more than Barrons? Why can't he just be different? Why do I get the feeling this means that there's a Dani/Ryodan HEA in the works?
I do have some theories/speculations that I could go on about where things would turn and make me happy again, satisfied. But I don't know if I can bear to hope for them to happen. I don't foresee any scenario in which I'm happy with Ryodan and Dani ending up together.
Here are a couple of fantastic reviews that I agree with 100%: bean and Cory and Jenny
This doesn't deserve 1 star.
Previous thoughts:
I don't know what to say, I don't know how to review this, I don't even really know what to rate this. I'm leaning towards 2.5 stars right now
I'm just... *sigh*
This was seriously a let-down. Some good parts, some parts that make me curious/think, but overall - a lot kind of left me feeling gross or angry, and the rest bored me to tears.
July 18, 2022
MacHalo buddy read starting December, 22 2014.
Warning #1: there might be some spoilers in this review. Get over it. At this point, I couldn't care less.
Warning #2: I'm really pissed off about this. Stand back while I unleash my rage.
There are bad instalments in series. Then there is Iced: the worst instalment in the history of bad instalments. Congratulations KMM, you managed the impossible.
I really should have gotten drunk before I started reading this. I have so many negative things to say about Iced I don't know where to start. Oh wait I do. The main problem here? KMM writing a non-YA book with a YA MC who acts like a bloody 8-year-old, in a world that is all about overbearing über Alpha males obsessed with dicks, fucks, and beating the shit out of everyone. And I'm not saying that because any of it shocked me (I happen to love sexed-up overbearing über Alpha males but not when they're so obviously out of context). No, I'm only saying it because it was so poorly done. Write YA or write Adult. Make a freaking choice and stick to it.
Frankly Ms Moning, have you ever been around a teenager? It sure doesn't look like it from what I've just read. Then again, maybe you are the teenager. Why else would you use song lyrics as chapter titles?
Frankly Ms Moning, were you trying to shock your readers? Sorry to say it didn't work. The whole ordeal was pathetic, ridiculous and downright unrealistic. And poorly executed (I said it before and I'll say it again). Do you really expect me to believe that Ryodan and Christian both have a crush on an insignificant, immature teenage girl? PLEASE. Some of your scenes read like a freaking teenage drama. What the hell were you thinking when you wrote this?
Frankly Ms Moning, did you suddenly lack inspiration? I mean, you did try to pull a Mac + Barrons + V'Lane on us again with Dani as an underage, arrogant Mac, Ryo as Barrons and Christian as V'Lane. EPIC FAIL. Because ultimately Iced feels like a crappy version of the first 5 books in the series.
Frankly Ms Moning, were editors on strike before Iced was published? Because you know, they could have trimmed a good 400 pages from the book and no one would have noticed. Because let's face it, this is the most boring book ever. Blah blah blah blah, oh look someone iced the place, "I'm Dani the Mega who is going to save the world and Ryo is a bastard", blah blah blah blah, oh look someone iced the place, "I'm Dani the Mega who is going to save the world and Ryo is a bastard", blah blah blah blah, oh look someone iced the place, "I'm Dani the Mega who is going to save the world and Ryo is a bastard." Actually I'm not being fair here Ms Moning because you did achieve something with this book: I'm fairly certain that with Kat's POVs you hold the cure for insomnia. I have to admit the pace of the book picks up towards the end but it was much too little, much too late.
Frankly Ms Moning, what happened to Kat & Jo? Did you just keep the names and change the personalities? As far as I remember they used to be strong characters. Either I have early Alzheimer's or you messed up pretty badly. Kat is so pathetic she makes me wish Rowena was back. Jo is ridiculous as a delusional, idiotic, love-sick puppy dog.
Frankly Ms Moning, the only thing I can thank you for is Ryo. And I don't care what other people think. Yes he is a total (check all that apply) bastard/asshole/douche/whatever but man would I love to be on his breakfast menu. And we all know what he likes to have for breakfast right?
Frankly Ms Moning, what was that pathetic attempt at a cliffhanger ending? Do you seriously think I'm going to lose sleep over it? Think again.
I was ready to like this book despite the bad vibes, bad reviews and lack of JZB. Before I read Iced I didn't understand why some readers were so mad at KMM. Man do I get it now. I resent KMM for making me go through this. I didn't DNF the book because I kept waiting for something significant to happen and didn't want to miss anything that might be important in the grand scheme of things. I really should have DNFed the freaking book. Because now that I've read it I'm not even sure I want to read Burned. I was supposed to reread the series before it's released and I'm not sure I want to do that either. Thank you Ms Moning for ruining it all for me.
Hell hath no fury like a reader scorned.
Warning #1: there might be some spoilers in this review. Get over it. At this point, I couldn't care less.
Warning #2: I'm really pissed off about this. Stand back while I unleash my rage.
There are bad instalments in series. Then there is Iced: the worst instalment in the history of bad instalments. Congratulations KMM, you managed the impossible.
I really should have gotten drunk before I started reading this. I have so many negative things to say about Iced I don't know where to start. Oh wait I do. The main problem here? KMM writing a non-YA book with a YA MC who acts like a bloody 8-year-old, in a world that is all about overbearing über Alpha males obsessed with dicks, fucks, and beating the shit out of everyone. And I'm not saying that because any of it shocked me (I happen to love sexed-up overbearing über Alpha males but not when they're so obviously out of context). No, I'm only saying it because it was so poorly done. Write YA or write Adult. Make a freaking choice and stick to it.
Frankly Ms Moning, have you ever been around a teenager? It sure doesn't look like it from what I've just read. Then again, maybe you are the teenager. Why else would you use song lyrics as chapter titles?
Frankly Ms Moning, were you trying to shock your readers? Sorry to say it didn't work. The whole ordeal was pathetic, ridiculous and downright unrealistic. And poorly executed (I said it before and I'll say it again). Do you really expect me to believe that Ryodan and Christian both have a crush on an insignificant, immature teenage girl? PLEASE. Some of your scenes read like a freaking teenage drama. What the hell were you thinking when you wrote this?
Frankly Ms Moning, did you suddenly lack inspiration? I mean, you did try to pull a Mac + Barrons + V'Lane on us again with Dani as an underage, arrogant Mac, Ryo as Barrons and Christian as V'Lane. EPIC FAIL. Because ultimately Iced feels like a crappy version of the first 5 books in the series.
Frankly Ms Moning, were editors on strike before Iced was published? Because you know, they could have trimmed a good 400 pages from the book and no one would have noticed. Because let's face it, this is the most boring book ever. Blah blah blah blah, oh look someone iced the place, "I'm Dani the Mega who is going to save the world and Ryo is a bastard", blah blah blah blah, oh look someone iced the place, "I'm Dani the Mega who is going to save the world and Ryo is a bastard", blah blah blah blah, oh look someone iced the place, "I'm Dani the Mega who is going to save the world and Ryo is a bastard." Actually I'm not being fair here Ms Moning because you did achieve something with this book: I'm fairly certain that with Kat's POVs you hold the cure for insomnia. I have to admit the pace of the book picks up towards the end but it was much too little, much too late.
Frankly Ms Moning, what happened to Kat & Jo? Did you just keep the names and change the personalities? As far as I remember they used to be strong characters. Either I have early Alzheimer's or you messed up pretty badly. Kat is so pathetic she makes me wish Rowena was back. Jo is ridiculous as a delusional, idiotic, love-sick puppy dog.
Frankly Ms Moning, the only thing I can thank you for is Ryo. And I don't care what other people think. Yes he is a total (check all that apply) bastard/asshole/douche/whatever but man would I love to be on his breakfast menu. And we all know what he likes to have for breakfast right?
Frankly Ms Moning, what was that pathetic attempt at a cliffhanger ending? Do you seriously think I'm going to lose sleep over it? Think again.
I was ready to like this book despite the bad vibes, bad reviews and lack of JZB. Before I read Iced I didn't understand why some readers were so mad at KMM. Man do I get it now. I resent KMM for making me go through this. I didn't DNF the book because I kept waiting for something significant to happen and didn't want to miss anything that might be important in the grand scheme of things. I really should have DNFed the freaking book. Because now that I've read it I'm not even sure I want to read Burned. I was supposed to reread the series before it's released and I'm not sure I want to do that either. Thank you Ms Moning for ruining it all for me.
Hell hath no fury like a reader scorned.
February 6, 2013
Posted on Under the Covers
If you haven’t read the first five books of the Fever series, I strongly suggest you reconsider starting with this book. It’s not a spin-off. ICED is book 6 of the series. The events of ICED occur after some events in SHADOWFEVER. In ICED, you will encounter spoilers that will spoil the first five books, so you’ve been warned.
Readers say goodbye to Mac and Barrons (for now) and are introduced to the World of the Mega. Dani O’Malley is her name and don’t you forget it! Since the walls came down, the streets of Dublin are littered with Fae and violence. This is just one of the trubs that Dani is faced with. Dani is juggling a myriad of problems: Her ex best friend, Mac, is out to seek retribution, the Unseelie princes are dead set on killing her and Inspector Jayne has taken her sword, the only protection and weapon she has against the Fae. Like it could get any worse? KMM adds another weight to the Mega’s shoulder. Mysterious happenings are appearing all over Dublin where people are dying as they are frozen in spot, like some creepy version of freeze tag. It’s up to Dani to save what’s left of her city before it becomes too late.
I had the same concerns that I’m sure everyone else had about Dani. She’s young. 14 years old. Where does KMM think she’s going to take this story? But not surprisingly, KMM does a remarkable job of writing Dani’s POV so that it stands out without being too loud or rambunctious. There are times when Dani freaks out like a normal teen. It happens usually when she’s angry or stressed out. But I would rather have a heroine who is reacts rather than just lets things fly over her. KMM straddles the line. ICED is definitely not YA and by no means should be the norm for a young teenage girl. But that’s the thing I think people need to remember. Dani isn’t your average teen. At 14, she has seen and experienced things that have carved her into who she is today. The events from her past make her into a mouthy, independent superhero who doesn’t take shit from anyone. And I love it!
While I was reading this book, someone asked me if I was OK with all the sex that happens in this book, considering how young Dani is. My answer is: Would it really make a huge difference if she was of legal age? I doubt it. KMM’s writing is infused with rich depictions of sex and passion. If she had toned that down simply because of Dani’s age, I think readers would be furious. And if she had made Dani older, we wouldn’t have gotten the true story that KMM planned for Dani. Moning’s writing tends to cause strong reader reaction. Controversy is conflict. Needless to say, sex keeps the series interesting. And Dani’s age doesn’t define her. She has already proven that she can keep her legs closed until she decides she is ready.
Ryodan is the new man of the hour and oh my, he can nod at me anytime! Sleek and sophisticated, Ryodan’s got everything he needs to knock Barrons off that Top Alpha spot! There is so much more to learn about the boss of Chester’s and I’m definitely willing to wait another year just to find out!
I think it’s too soon to decipher who Dani will have her HEA with. But Ryodan, Christian and Dancer are definitely not bad candidates. Naturally, Ryodan gets my vote. I’m already a complete puddle of goo for him. Christian would be a good fit too but with the way he is now, I doubt the story would take the simplest route. Christian already believes that he is in love with her. If Dani suddenly decides that the she wants him, where would the story go? Dancer is like home for Dani. When she is with Dancer, she isn’t Mega the super-fast, super-smart superhero who is going to save Dublin. She’s just Dani. I’m just glad that all three of them know not just how amazing she will be when she is older, but also appreciate who she is now.
ICED just may be my favorite book of the year. Terrifyingly addictive, Karen Marie Moning has ruined me for any other author or book out there. Introducing Dani to an audience who are so passionate about the series was a risk, yet Moning has proven time and again that she is one of the premier authors of Urban Fantasy. ICED is an absolute must read!
Favorite Quote:
"This ain't no fecking campfire and cuddle!"
I was thinking along the same lines as she was. Dani just says what I'm thinking.
My Dani
You can see the rest of my Fever cast here
If you haven’t read the first five books of the Fever series, I strongly suggest you reconsider starting with this book. It’s not a spin-off. ICED is book 6 of the series. The events of ICED occur after some events in SHADOWFEVER. In ICED, you will encounter spoilers that will spoil the first five books, so you’ve been warned.
Readers say goodbye to Mac and Barrons (for now) and are introduced to the World of the Mega. Dani O’Malley is her name and don’t you forget it! Since the walls came down, the streets of Dublin are littered with Fae and violence. This is just one of the trubs that Dani is faced with. Dani is juggling a myriad of problems: Her ex best friend, Mac, is out to seek retribution, the Unseelie princes are dead set on killing her and Inspector Jayne has taken her sword, the only protection and weapon she has against the Fae. Like it could get any worse? KMM adds another weight to the Mega’s shoulder. Mysterious happenings are appearing all over Dublin where people are dying as they are frozen in spot, like some creepy version of freeze tag. It’s up to Dani to save what’s left of her city before it becomes too late.
I had the same concerns that I’m sure everyone else had about Dani. She’s young. 14 years old. Where does KMM think she’s going to take this story? But not surprisingly, KMM does a remarkable job of writing Dani’s POV so that it stands out without being too loud or rambunctious. There are times when Dani freaks out like a normal teen. It happens usually when she’s angry or stressed out. But I would rather have a heroine who is reacts rather than just lets things fly over her. KMM straddles the line. ICED is definitely not YA and by no means should be the norm for a young teenage girl. But that’s the thing I think people need to remember. Dani isn’t your average teen. At 14, she has seen and experienced things that have carved her into who she is today. The events from her past make her into a mouthy, independent superhero who doesn’t take shit from anyone. And I love it!
While I was reading this book, someone asked me if I was OK with all the sex that happens in this book, considering how young Dani is. My answer is: Would it really make a huge difference if she was of legal age? I doubt it. KMM’s writing is infused with rich depictions of sex and passion. If she had toned that down simply because of Dani’s age, I think readers would be furious. And if she had made Dani older, we wouldn’t have gotten the true story that KMM planned for Dani. Moning’s writing tends to cause strong reader reaction. Controversy is conflict. Needless to say, sex keeps the series interesting. And Dani’s age doesn’t define her. She has already proven that she can keep her legs closed until she decides she is ready.
Ryodan is the new man of the hour and oh my, he can nod at me anytime! Sleek and sophisticated, Ryodan’s got everything he needs to knock Barrons off that Top Alpha spot! There is so much more to learn about the boss of Chester’s and I’m definitely willing to wait another year just to find out!
I think it’s too soon to decipher who Dani will have her HEA with. But Ryodan, Christian and Dancer are definitely not bad candidates. Naturally, Ryodan gets my vote. I’m already a complete puddle of goo for him. Christian would be a good fit too but with the way he is now, I doubt the story would take the simplest route. Christian already believes that he is in love with her. If Dani suddenly decides that the she wants him, where would the story go? Dancer is like home for Dani. When she is with Dancer, she isn’t Mega the super-fast, super-smart superhero who is going to save Dublin. She’s just Dani. I’m just glad that all three of them know not just how amazing she will be when she is older, but also appreciate who she is now.
ICED just may be my favorite book of the year. Terrifyingly addictive, Karen Marie Moning has ruined me for any other author or book out there. Introducing Dani to an audience who are so passionate about the series was a risk, yet Moning has proven time and again that she is one of the premier authors of Urban Fantasy. ICED is an absolute must read!
Favorite Quote:
"This ain't no fecking campfire and cuddle!"
I was thinking along the same lines as she was. Dani just says what I'm thinking.
My Dani
You can see the rest of my Fever cast here
Want to read
August 27, 2011
I know how that baby feels. I really want this book.
Update: It has a cover! Damn, I love it.
April 20, 2018
While I knew I should have never gotten so excited about a book before reading it, I just couldn't help doing exactly that. I adored the fever series so much that the possibility of getting anything else from that world had me going crazy. Probably the main reason for my disappointement.
I was just SO SURE the heroine would grow on me now that she was getting her own book...
I never really liked Dani and after reading this book I still don't. She is barely a girl, not heroine material. She is shallow, self-centered and really immature. She started to grow on me though, as with every page I read I got to know a more hidden and interesting side of her. We might see how she starts to discover some things eventually at the end, but she still was incapable of realizing the most important and obvious ones, which drove me constantly crazy. I do see how she one day will become the heroine I want her to be, but that day is far from this first book.
For some reason I just didn't really believe this book would be YA, I was just so sure KMM would find a magical way of making Dani grow up fast...
It was a good read, but too YA, which was a genre I was in no mood of reading at all. For some reason I kept waiting for Dani to grow up and stop saying "feck" and "dude"... NEVER.HAPPENED...
N.E.V.E.R.
Worst than that, be ready for NO ROMANCE AT ALL. No sexual tension, no real chimestry, no NOTHING. Dani just lives in her own world and has no clue whatsoever that 2 of the most powerful guys are seriously into her. 3 if you count her nice-human-brilliant cute-with-glasses friend.
I really want Dani to grow up, I just don't see a possible way of making it happen fast and believable... ***sigh.
I do see and appreciate the potential this series has, but right now it's far, far away of getting there...
I was just SO SURE the heroine would grow on me now that she was getting her own book...
I never really liked Dani and after reading this book I still don't. She is barely a girl, not heroine material. She is shallow, self-centered and really immature. She started to grow on me though, as with every page I read I got to know a more hidden and interesting side of her. We might see how she starts to discover some things eventually at the end, but she still was incapable of realizing the most important and obvious ones, which drove me constantly crazy. I do see how she one day will become the heroine I want her to be, but that day is far from this first book.
For some reason I just didn't really believe this book would be YA, I was just so sure KMM would find a magical way of making Dani grow up fast...
It was a good read, but too YA, which was a genre I was in no mood of reading at all. For some reason I kept waiting for Dani to grow up and stop saying "feck" and "dude"... NEVER.HAPPENED...
N.E.V.E.R.
Worst than that, be ready for NO ROMANCE AT ALL. No sexual tension, no real chimestry, no NOTHING. Dani just lives in her own world and has no clue whatsoever that 2 of the most powerful guys are seriously into her. 3 if you count her nice-human-brilliant cute-with-glasses friend.
I really want Dani to grow up, I just don't see a possible way of making it happen fast and believable... ***sigh.
I do see and appreciate the potential this series has, but right now it's far, far away of getting there...
January 3, 2015
1 Somebody Please Kill Dani's Inner Voice Stars
Before I tell you about my experience with this book I should tell you that I DNFed it at 16% which was about 80 pages. This book was TOO FREAKING LONG!
When I began this book I expected to hate it because of many reasons.
a) I don't like Dani's fecks and freakin' fake bravado.
b) The oversexualisation of a barely 14yo girl isn't cool.
c) Having 2 older guys(one of which is millenia old) lusting after a kid is perverted but it's also way too far fetched and unbelievable. It makes the characters seem inept and in no way HOT.
d) The abuse that Ryo subjects Dani to.
e) The book is too long.
But what I didn't expect was how much I would hate Dani. I HATE, HATE, HATE that girl!!!
Her freakin' inner musings, that godawful fake bravado, that ridiculous superhero "me Robin, you Batman" idea made me wanna kill something. Preferably her. She made the book sooooooooo boring. Of the 16% I read, 14% was Dani thinking this and that. No action, no mystery, nothing. Just the inner dialogs of a mentally challenged teen girl that needs to grow the fuck up.
I also didn't care about Ryo at all. He is nothing like Barrons, who was a sexy asshole, Ryo was just an asshole.
So to sum up my feelings of the book, Bored, Bored, Bored, Angry, Angry, Angry, Bored, Bored, TOO FREKING BORED.
PS. KMM what the hell did you do to Christian??????????
Finally this book's time is here. For a book with so many haters it sure has a high rating. I hope I'll belong in the fans category.
BR with the awesome MacHalo guys.
Before I tell you about my experience with this book I should tell you that I DNFed it at 16% which was about 80 pages. This book was TOO FREAKING LONG!
When I began this book I expected to hate it because of many reasons.
a) I don't like Dani's fecks and freakin' fake bravado.
b) The oversexualisation of a barely 14yo girl isn't cool.
c) Having 2 older guys(one of which is millenia old) lusting after a kid is perverted but it's also way too far fetched and unbelievable. It makes the characters seem inept and in no way HOT.
d) The abuse that Ryo subjects Dani to.
e) The book is too long.
But what I didn't expect was how much I would hate Dani. I HATE, HATE, HATE that girl!!!
Her freakin' inner musings, that godawful fake bravado, that ridiculous superhero "me Robin, you Batman" idea made me wanna kill something. Preferably her. She made the book sooooooooo boring. Of the 16% I read, 14% was Dani thinking this and that. No action, no mystery, nothing. Just the inner dialogs of a mentally challenged teen girl that needs to grow the fuck up.
I also didn't care about Ryo at all. He is nothing like Barrons, who was a sexy asshole, Ryo was just an asshole.
So to sum up my feelings of the book, Bored, Bored, Bored, Angry, Angry, Angry, Bored, Bored, TOO FREKING BORED.
PS. KMM what the hell did you do to Christian??????????
Finally this book's time is here. For a book with so many haters it sure has a high rating. I hope I'll belong in the fans category.
BR with the awesome MacHalo guys.
November 7, 2012
Ignore what I said last night. Sleep is a myth. I will now continue anyway. There are a few minor plot spoilers, but most of my discussion is about character reactions to Dani, so know that there will be a few small spoilers going into this review if you haven't read Iced. If you haven't at least read the Fever series, I'd say to tread with extreme caution.
...and so begins the first chapter in the story of Dani O'Malley's life.
I was one of the people who was on the fence about this series because Fever wrapped up in a decent way and sometimes it's tricky to move past a HEA. I didn't necessarily dislike Dani from the Fever series but she was never a character I cared about either.
I guess I should address the one subject that everyone seems to be talking about : one very young teen girl and the older men who all seem to have staked an interest in her.
Christian - Truth be told, he never made much of an impression on me back in Fever. I never really got why people had an interest in him. He was just there. Now, my feelings are mixed. Even being inside of his head and knowing what he's thinking and feeling about Dani, I still don't get it. If she were even a couple of years older, it would make more sense (why Moning didn't start this series 2 years after the collapse, I'll never know...). I get that a sixteen or seventeen year old girl might feasibly be visible as an "almost" woman to a man in his early twenties. I don't get that a fourteen year old girl would show up on a man's radar under most circumstances, regardless of much real world experience she has had with being forced to grow up fast. Dani's survival skills are still not making up for the fact that she has zero experience with the male species. So yeah...it's not the underage thing that has me squicked out (case in point : I love Rose and Dimitri), it's the degree of how underage she is.
I'm so torn. This new "whipped" Christian has me a bit perplexed. Even taking the age thing out of the equation, this "fast fall" is strange to me. Not sure why it wasn't just about unexplained attraction instead of this all-consuming desire. Couldn't this have been given time to build at least over the course of a book or two? He's sappy, creepy and bizarre in one instant, then extremely hot in another. I hate, yet love, how he's feeling from one moment to the next. Gah, it kills me sometimes because I feel like his feelings are wasted on this girl who doesn't appreciate any of it...sigh.
Peek inside the spoiler for a possible relative of Christian's :
Ryodan - He's been on my radar since back in the Fever days. Mysterious people will always get me to pause. He is my V'lane of this series. I need to know more about what's under the facade. I took up too much space on Christian, so I'm glad I can't wax poetic on this character because we don't know enough about him yet. Can you blame me for wanting to know more?
Jo - Eh. If Ryodan's going to end up with anyone, I hope it's not her. I'm thinking (maybe wishful thinking) that he's only keeping Jo close and protecting her because she's important to Dani. And it's easier to keep someone close to protect if you give off the illusion that you're interested. The scene at the start where Ryo's challenging Christian with his looks makes me think that he's biding his time and waiting for Dani to grow up also.
Lor - To quote Dani, "Dude." I like this dude. He's a most awesome sidekick.
Dancer - I don't know if I trust him completely, but there is something likable about how smart he is.
Okay, character assessment over. The book itself carried the same intricate world building as Fever and I love how every adventure ties back to a bigger picture. I have the feeling that this is going to be a fun thrill ride...and I'm looking forward to the inevitable sexy time that will come eventually (at least down the road after a few books) when Dani grows up. Moning has this way of dangling that carrot on a stick for us, making us want to follow it until we get our reward.
Death on her left.
Devil on her right.
...and so begins the first chapter in the story of Dani O'Malley's life.
I was one of the people who was on the fence about this series because Fever wrapped up in a decent way and sometimes it's tricky to move past a HEA. I didn't necessarily dislike Dani from the Fever series but she was never a character I cared about either.
I guess I should address the one subject that everyone seems to be talking about : one very young teen girl and the older men who all seem to have staked an interest in her.
Christian - Truth be told, he never made much of an impression on me back in Fever. I never really got why people had an interest in him. He was just there. Now, my feelings are mixed. Even being inside of his head and knowing what he's thinking and feeling about Dani, I still don't get it. If she were even a couple of years older, it would make more sense (why Moning didn't start this series 2 years after the collapse, I'll never know...). I get that a sixteen or seventeen year old girl might feasibly be visible as an "almost" woman to a man in his early twenties. I don't get that a fourteen year old girl would show up on a man's radar under most circumstances, regardless of much real world experience she has had with being forced to grow up fast. Dani's survival skills are still not making up for the fact that she has zero experience with the male species. So yeah...it's not the underage thing that has me squicked out (case in point : I love Rose and Dimitri), it's the degree of how underage she is.
I'm so torn. This new "whipped" Christian has me a bit perplexed. Even taking the age thing out of the equation, this "fast fall" is strange to me. Not sure why it wasn't just about unexplained attraction instead of this all-consuming desire. Couldn't this have been given time to build at least over the course of a book or two? He's sappy, creepy and bizarre in one instant, then extremely hot in another. I hate, yet love, how he's feeling from one moment to the next. Gah, it kills me sometimes because I feel like his feelings are wasted on this girl who doesn't appreciate any of it...sigh.
"Say my name, lass."
"Say my fucking name!"
I'm not surprised to feel myself trembling. I'm touching my goddess.
"Lass, doona be looking up at me like that. On the other hand, do. Yes. Yes. Exactly like that. Princess, you're slaying me."
Just one time before I turn into the villain of this piece, just one time before I become the fourth and final Unseelie prince, I want to be her Highlander. And her hero.
If he killed her I'm going to beat him bloody and eat him piece by piece, slowly, with steak sauce.
Peek inside the spoiler for a possible relative of Christian's :
Ryodan - He's been on my radar since back in the Fever days. Mysterious people will always get me to pause. He is my V'lane of this series. I need to know more about what's under the facade. I took up too much space on Christian, so I'm glad I can't wax poetic on this character because we don't know enough about him yet. Can you blame me for wanting to know more?
"You're distressing Dani. No one distresses Dani but me."
"Isn't that quaint. The chivalrous Unseelie prince with the dick of death."
Jo - Eh. If Ryodan's going to end up with anyone, I hope it's not her. I'm thinking (maybe wishful thinking) that he's only keeping Jo close and protecting her because she's important to Dani. And it's easier to keep someone close to protect if you give off the illusion that you're interested. The scene at the start where Ryo's challenging Christian with his looks makes me think that he's biding his time and waiting for Dani to grow up also.
Lor - To quote Dani, "Dude." I like this dude. He's a most awesome sidekick.
Dancer - I don't know if I trust him completely, but there is something likable about how smart he is.
Okay, character assessment over. The book itself carried the same intricate world building as Fever and I love how every adventure ties back to a bigger picture. I have the feeling that this is going to be a fun thrill ride...and I'm looking forward to the inevitable sexy time that will come eventually (at least down the road after a few books) when Dani grows up. Moning has this way of dangling that carrot on a stick for us, making us want to follow it until we get our reward.
February 21, 2013
KMM is a fecking genius and that is all.
December 21, 2014
Ooooooh.
So.
Yeah, this was pretty bad.
The first problem is that this is not a YA book, but the main character is a young adult. So you have an adult genre writer trying to make a YA character sound natural in an adult book. In adult situations.
Except she doesn't.
Doesn't sound like an adult.
Doesn't sound like a young adult, either.
Dani sounds like she was written by someone who has never been around a tweenager.
Fourteen?
Riiiiight.
My seven year old daughter doesn't sound that immature.
And, just so you know, my daughter is not especially mature.
Dani doesn't even remotely resemble fourteen. I might buy that she's nine or ten. Maybe.
Dear Karen Marie Moning,
Please forgive me for what I'm about to say. You are one of my favorite authors, and I love everything you have ever written.
Except Iced...
which I believe was the product of a massive Brain Fart.
Nobody's perfect.
What was Moning thinking?!
In what reality would it be a good idea to take the one horrible character she created from the Fever series, and turn her into the lead in the next book?
I thought Dani's voice was really irritating in the previous books, but it was nothing compared to being bombarded by her incessant inner dialogue (500 pages!) in this one.
shudder
Dani's character is a literary equivalent to the Annoying Orange.
For example, she refers to herself as 'Mega' and calls herself a superhero.
For. The. Entire. Book.
And she still thinks boys are icky.
At fourteen?!
See, at this point she does seem a bit like my seven year old...
I'm definitely not advocating that she be sexually active in the books, but even Percy Jackson and Harry Potter liked girls, for Christ's sake! It felt ridiculous that *cough* 'Mega' didn't. I'm guessing Moning made her emotionallyretarded backward so that she could let the old guys drool all over her without catching too much shit.
And speaking of...
I know a lot of reviewers were horrified by all of the older male characters and their interest in a barely pubescent girl. Personally, it didn't freak me out. But maybe that was because I had already read all of the scathing reviews, and was somewhat expecting things to be worse.
Or maybe it was because I just thought the overall plot sucked so badly that what was one more thing?
The *snort* plot was unbearably slow and pointless for the first half of the book, but did manage to pick up somewhat in the second half.
I'm not saying the second half was good...I'm just saying it was better.
Iced was a crushing disappointment for me, because the rest of the Fever books are in my top 10 All-Time-Favorite reads.
And because of that, I'mGod it hurts! still willing to give the next book a fair chance.
So.
Yeah, this was pretty bad.
The first problem is that this is not a YA book, but the main character is a young adult. So you have an adult genre writer trying to make a YA character sound natural in an adult book. In adult situations.
Except she doesn't.
Doesn't sound like an adult.
Doesn't sound like a young adult, either.
Dani sounds like she was written by someone who has never been around a tweenager.
Fourteen?
Riiiiight.
My seven year old daughter doesn't sound that immature.
And, just so you know, my daughter is not especially mature.
Dani doesn't even remotely resemble fourteen. I might buy that she's nine or ten. Maybe.
Dear Karen Marie Moning,
Please forgive me for what I'm about to say. You are one of my favorite authors, and I love everything you have ever written.
Except Iced...
which I believe was the product of a massive Brain Fart.
Nobody's perfect.
What was Moning thinking?!
In what reality would it be a good idea to take the one horrible character she created from the Fever series, and turn her into the lead in the next book?
I thought Dani's voice was really irritating in the previous books, but it was nothing compared to being bombarded by her incessant inner dialogue (500 pages!) in this one.
shudder
Dani's character is a literary equivalent to the Annoying Orange.
For example, she refers to herself as 'Mega' and calls herself a superhero.
For. The. Entire. Book.
And she still thinks boys are icky.
At fourteen?!
See, at this point she does seem a bit like my seven year old...
I'm definitely not advocating that she be sexually active in the books, but even Percy Jackson and Harry Potter liked girls, for Christ's sake! It felt ridiculous that *cough* 'Mega' didn't. I'm guessing Moning made her emotionally
And speaking of...
I know a lot of reviewers were horrified by all of the older male characters and their interest in a barely pubescent girl. Personally, it didn't freak me out. But maybe that was because I had already read all of the scathing reviews, and was somewhat expecting things to be worse.
Or maybe it was because I just thought the overall plot sucked so badly that what was one more thing?
The *snort* plot was unbearably slow and pointless for the first half of the book, but did manage to pick up somewhat in the second half.
I'm not saying the second half was good...I'm just saying it was better.
Iced was a crushing disappointment for me, because the rest of the Fever books are in my top 10 All-Time-Favorite reads.
And because of that, I'm
October 10, 2014
”My life is so fecking interesting I almost can’t stand it!
I absolutely adored this action packed sixth book of the series. This story switches between three povs, including those of Christian, Kat (the new head of the Abbey) and Dani. Each character’s pov adds to this story and the big picture. The writing in this book and the creativity was truly amazing and so much fun.
Dani “Mega” O’Malley is a fifteen years old warrior who is extremely powerful and so fun to read. I love the way she hops from foot to foot inhaling Snicker bars. She is totally kick ass and her age makes her thoughts regarding adults, sex and saving the world completely endearing. She is brave and so darn fierce.
”A superhero’s work is never done.”
Christian is a Highlander who is slowly turning into an Unseelie prince. He will break a reader’s heart each time he enters the story. He has it SO bad for Dani and our girl is just so young and doesn’t see anyone at the level of passion he sees her in. He will do anything for her and I mean anything.
”Just one time before I turn into the villain of this piece, just one time before I become the fourth and final Unseelie prince, I want to be her Highlander. And her hero. She’ll remember, when there’s nothing else left of me worth remembering.”
Ryodan has forced Dani to sign a contract to work for him to protect her friend from the Abbey, Jo's life. Ryodan seems to be grooming her, guarding her and saving her for his future perhaps?
”You’re going to be one hell of a woman one day, Dani.”
Dancer is Dani’s brilliant seventeen year old best friend. He doesn’t seem all that human to me and I'm excited to read more about him. He too appears to have strong feelings towards Dani and may have the upper hand and her complete trust.
[image error]
So you see there are three males in play for our very young Dani. None of these men make any romantic moves on her but they all seem to want to claim her.
A quick run down of events are as follows: the Abbey headed by Kat is guarding Cruce’s frozen body, the Hoar Frost King is icing Dublin and a knitting monster called the Crimson Hag is killing residents. Dani is still ducking Mac and has been sstrong armed into working with Ryodan. Christian has appointed himself as her protector while Dancer seems smarter than everyone.
Overall, this was an action packed book that will have fans wishing 2015 was here already. I may just try and get lost in the White Mansion so I can read the next book sooner.
“One day, kid, you'll be willing to mortgage your fucking soul for somebody.”
I absolutely adored this action packed sixth book of the series. This story switches between three povs, including those of Christian, Kat (the new head of the Abbey) and Dani. Each character’s pov adds to this story and the big picture. The writing in this book and the creativity was truly amazing and so much fun.
Dani “Mega” O’Malley is a fifteen years old warrior who is extremely powerful and so fun to read. I love the way she hops from foot to foot inhaling Snicker bars. She is totally kick ass and her age makes her thoughts regarding adults, sex and saving the world completely endearing. She is brave and so darn fierce.
”A superhero’s work is never done.”
Christian is a Highlander who is slowly turning into an Unseelie prince. He will break a reader’s heart each time he enters the story. He has it SO bad for Dani and our girl is just so young and doesn’t see anyone at the level of passion he sees her in. He will do anything for her and I mean anything.
”Just one time before I turn into the villain of this piece, just one time before I become the fourth and final Unseelie prince, I want to be her Highlander. And her hero. She’ll remember, when there’s nothing else left of me worth remembering.”
Ryodan has forced Dani to sign a contract to work for him to protect her friend from the Abbey, Jo's life. Ryodan seems to be grooming her, guarding her and saving her for his future perhaps?
”You’re going to be one hell of a woman one day, Dani.”
Dancer is Dani’s brilliant seventeen year old best friend. He doesn’t seem all that human to me and I'm excited to read more about him. He too appears to have strong feelings towards Dani and may have the upper hand and her complete trust.
[image error]
So you see there are three males in play for our very young Dani. None of these men make any romantic moves on her but they all seem to want to claim her.
A quick run down of events are as follows: the Abbey headed by Kat is guarding Cruce’s frozen body, the Hoar Frost King is icing Dublin and a knitting monster called the Crimson Hag is killing residents. Dani is still ducking Mac and has been sstrong armed into working with Ryodan. Christian has appointed himself as her protector while Dancer seems smarter than everyone.
Overall, this was an action packed book that will have fans wishing 2015 was here already. I may just try and get lost in the White Mansion so I can read the next book sooner.
“One day, kid, you'll be willing to mortgage your fucking soul for somebody.”
August 11, 2016
Really enjoyed it, KMM never fails to entertain me. What an imagination! Dani was a riot too, I loved her despite her only being 14 y/o. (It's not a YA book though, she's just a young character very much in an adult world.)
I had some strong issues about Dani's age and the romantic/sexual references made toward her, but the core story was solid good.
Dani at 14: A girl or a woman?
-OR- 
Something is randomly icing areas around Dublin (and further out), and there doesn't appear to be anyway to track its next move. It is leaving many dead - humans and Fae alike. So Ryoden solicits (blackmails?!) Dani to help investigate, and soon others join in too.
We meet Dancer, Dani's new 17 y/o guy friend, a human with a brilliant scientific mind. Christian is back, and he's only focused on Dani. He must protect her, but from what? He is turning dark Fae, but still has some human in him. Kat is now in charge at the abby, but having Cruse imprisoned in the catacombs below proves to be her greatest challenge. Jo (from the abby) finds herself employed at Chesters, Ryoden's club, and becomes a big part of the investigation as well.
The story takes time weaving all the plot lines together, which at first appear random and separate. Dani visits Fae, Christian struggles with turning Fae, Ryonden obsesses over Dani's safety, the abby struggles with an IFP (inter-dimensional fairy pothole?), Dancer mysteriously comes and goes, Jo forms a surprising crush, a new club of crusaders offer peace and protection, and of course more horrible Fae monsters are new to Dublin. The ending pulls everything together for a final spectacular showdown.
Unlike the Fever series, this one does not end with a major cliffhanger. There are a few teasers to wet your appetite for the next book (and I can't wait!), but the main story here is wrapped up. There are some story lines that will certainly continue as well. We see very little Mac and Barrons in this one.
At this point, I have NO CLUE who will be Dani's hero. I assume Ryoden, but... maybe not. ICED is told from three POVs: Dani, Kat and Christian. Dani gets the vast majority of it, but we learn quite a bit more through Kat and Christians own stories.
I absolutely enjoyed this one, and thought Dani was a great character to base the next few books around. But there were some strong niggles. The several suggestive sexual innuendos towards Dani by Ryadon and Christian felt completely inappropriate, and it was probably my biggest sticking point from giving this one a 5-star rating. (They were mild, I guess, but still made me cringe a time or two. I get that the gray lady gave her some shine and curves, but she is still just a 14 y/o girl!) SPOILER:
Despite my few niggles, I really enjoyed this one! I can't wait to see what is next, but I do hope Dani ages quickly in the next. This story worked great as UF, but there is no romance element as of yet since Dani is still only 14.
February 4, 2016
Seriously, what the fuck. Aside from the rampant, rapey sexualization of a 14 year old by every man who comes into contact with her, the main character is annoying, and the writing style drove me crazy. Ugh.
December 30, 2014
Reread/Buddy Read with the crazy fun group over at Dust Off Your Machalo
Read #2 I can Fecking take it.
I finished this book AGAIN. I didn't like it as much the second time through and I'll NEVER read it again.
2.75 Stars -
This is the first book in a new series currently centered on Dani O’Malley and with that a new voice. While it isn’t as intense as her voice in the Fever series it is still very different from Mac’s. I really missed Mac and Barrons in this book as there are only a few scenes that involve them on the periphery but it is the setup of a new story line so that is to be expected. I’m sure we will see more of them in Burned if the ending was any indication. KMM really does know how to end a book with something that grabs hold of you and this is no exception.
Dani is full of spunk and full of herself. At times the teenagerness of her is overwhelming, much like pink Mac could be in Darkfever, but worse. I expect that this is something that she will grow out of in a book or two *crosses fingers*. But for all the banter she is heroic and extremely full of herself. I often forgot that she is only fourteen in this except then everyone kept reminding me. Her backstory was definitely heartbreaking but vivid and well thought through. I do like the setup of the new players in the series. Most of the book is centered on Dani, Ryodan, Christian and Dancer with a little bit of Kat and Jo sprinkled in.
There is a mystery afoot and Dani thinks of herself as a superhero playing Robin to Ryodan’s Batman. It was funny and I liked all the superhero references.
“It's just another of Robin's sayings. Like, 'Holy strawberries, Batman, we're in a jam! Or, Holy Kleenex, Batman, it was right under our nose and we blew it!”
People and places are being Iced throughout the city. I enjoyed the mystery, it dragged a little in places, actually most of the book until the final 25% but overall it was well interesting. Ryodan is trying to take Dani in and teach her, contain her in a way so that she can grow into the woman she is meant to become. He is dark, dangerous and incredibly smart. He is also the only reason this book gets 2.75 stars, I do love those alpha assholes.
“You could ask me to teach you.”
“Huh?” This night is getting weird in a hurry. “Teach me like you’re teaching a class or something? What are you going to call it: ‘You Too Can Be a Sociopath 101’?”
“It would be more like a graduate-level class.”
I start to snicker. His sense of humour sneaks up on you. Then I remember who’s talking and bite it off.”
It seems as though he is laying claim to the future woman she will be. Protecting her and trying to rein in the unruly teen she is. Sometimes he behaves as if he is her father and other times it is as if he wants to be her future. I’m interested to see where this goes in later novels. I see what the author was trying to portray but it did seem a little creepy at times. But if you think about it he has been alive forever so the age difference will be astronomical no matter what. No one complained that Mac is like 22 and Barons is well eons older.
Christian is going through his transformation to an Unseelie Prince. It is confusing for him and he keeps loosing time he might be going a little crazy as well. In a few conversations with Dani he seems like two separate people. He is also waiting for Dani to become the woman she is meant to be in competition with Ryodan and Dancer for her future affections.
“Just one time before I turn into the villain of this piece, just one time before I become the fourth and final Unseelie prince, I want to be her Highlander. And her hero.”
Honestly I feel for Christian and his fate, he had true moments of greatness in this story and it will be interesting to see how he actually turns out.
Dancer was in the story a little here and there. I enjoyed the science geek aspect he brought to the story to explain the sites that are being iced. He definitely has a bigger backstory than we have seen yet and he too is totally enamored of Dani. There is some foreshadowing that hints whoever Dani ends up with between the three it will be epic. Although how much chance can a mere mortal have.
“One day, kid, you'll be willing to mortgage your fucking soul for somebody.”
All and all this is a fun read with a lot of set up for future novels, which I don’t mind at all if it all comes to fruition. I can see why some people were edgy about the sexual nuances of Dani and her three future suitors but I see where the author was trying to go with it and there isn’t even a teenage kiss so in my opinion she did it tastefully. KMM has totally convinced me that there are three men that will do anything to make sure Dani makes it to adulthood partially in hopes there is a chance to be with her as an adult. Although why does she have a magic future pussy I have no idea. All the prospects are so different that I’m hard pressed to pick a favorite right now, (who am I kidding Ryodan is my favorite asshole). The door is wide open for anyone of them to win her heart later imo or she is young enough maybe a few.
Seriously I reread the Fever series and loved it even more the second time through. This book on the reread I cringed more and it took so long to get to the end. I'm really excited for burned but I seriously hope things have been worked out. Although reading an excerpt about Lore it is already better than all of Iced.
Read #2 I can Fecking take it.
I finished this book AGAIN. I didn't like it as much the second time through and I'll NEVER read it again.
2.75 Stars -
This is the first book in a new series currently centered on Dani O’Malley and with that a new voice. While it isn’t as intense as her voice in the Fever series it is still very different from Mac’s. I really missed Mac and Barrons in this book as there are only a few scenes that involve them on the periphery but it is the setup of a new story line so that is to be expected. I’m sure we will see more of them in Burned if the ending was any indication. KMM really does know how to end a book with something that grabs hold of you and this is no exception.
Dani is full of spunk and full of herself. At times the teenagerness of her is overwhelming, much like pink Mac could be in Darkfever, but worse. I expect that this is something that she will grow out of in a book or two *crosses fingers*. But for all the banter she is heroic and extremely full of herself. I often forgot that she is only fourteen in this except then everyone kept reminding me. Her backstory was definitely heartbreaking but vivid and well thought through. I do like the setup of the new players in the series. Most of the book is centered on Dani, Ryodan, Christian and Dancer with a little bit of Kat and Jo sprinkled in.
There is a mystery afoot and Dani thinks of herself as a superhero playing Robin to Ryodan’s Batman. It was funny and I liked all the superhero references.
“It's just another of Robin's sayings. Like, 'Holy strawberries, Batman, we're in a jam! Or, Holy Kleenex, Batman, it was right under our nose and we blew it!”
People and places are being Iced throughout the city. I enjoyed the mystery, it dragged a little in places, actually most of the book until the final 25% but overall it was well interesting. Ryodan is trying to take Dani in and teach her, contain her in a way so that she can grow into the woman she is meant to become. He is dark, dangerous and incredibly smart. He is also the only reason this book gets 2.75 stars, I do love those alpha assholes.
“You could ask me to teach you.”
“Huh?” This night is getting weird in a hurry. “Teach me like you’re teaching a class or something? What are you going to call it: ‘You Too Can Be a Sociopath 101’?”
“It would be more like a graduate-level class.”
I start to snicker. His sense of humour sneaks up on you. Then I remember who’s talking and bite it off.”
It seems as though he is laying claim to the future woman she will be. Protecting her and trying to rein in the unruly teen she is. Sometimes he behaves as if he is her father and other times it is as if he wants to be her future. I’m interested to see where this goes in later novels. I see what the author was trying to portray but it did seem a little creepy at times. But if you think about it he has been alive forever so the age difference will be astronomical no matter what. No one complained that Mac is like 22 and Barons is well eons older.
Christian is going through his transformation to an Unseelie Prince. It is confusing for him and he keeps loosing time he might be going a little crazy as well. In a few conversations with Dani he seems like two separate people. He is also waiting for Dani to become the woman she is meant to be in competition with Ryodan and Dancer for her future affections.
“Just one time before I turn into the villain of this piece, just one time before I become the fourth and final Unseelie prince, I want to be her Highlander. And her hero.”
Honestly I feel for Christian and his fate, he had true moments of greatness in this story and it will be interesting to see how he actually turns out.
Dancer was in the story a little here and there. I enjoyed the science geek aspect he brought to the story to explain the sites that are being iced. He definitely has a bigger backstory than we have seen yet and he too is totally enamored of Dani. There is some foreshadowing that hints whoever Dani ends up with between the three it will be epic. Although how much chance can a mere mortal have.
“One day, kid, you'll be willing to mortgage your fucking soul for somebody.”
All and all this is a fun read with a lot of set up for future novels, which I don’t mind at all if it all comes to fruition. I can see why some people were edgy about the sexual nuances of Dani and her three future suitors but I see where the author was trying to go with it and there isn’t even a teenage kiss so in my opinion she did it tastefully. KMM has totally convinced me that there are three men that will do anything to make sure Dani makes it to adulthood partially in hopes there is a chance to be with her as an adult. Although why does she have a magic future pussy I have no idea. All the prospects are so different that I’m hard pressed to pick a favorite right now, (who am I kidding Ryodan is my favorite asshole). The door is wide open for anyone of them to win her heart later imo or she is young enough maybe a few.
Seriously I reread the Fever series and loved it even more the second time through. This book on the reread I cringed more and it took so long to get to the end. I'm really excited for burned but I seriously hope things have been worked out. Although reading an excerpt about Lore it is already better than all of Iced.
November 9, 2012
I'm so happy to go back to this world. I don't want to put up any spoilers. Hope you all love it as much as me.
I'm so excited that she is continuing the Fever series!!!! 5 more books, yippee!! I 'd love to read more about Ryodan.
TEASER 1--- From Karen Marie Moning FB page
Four nights he’s come to me, murmuring my name, making it an exquisite melody with which not even the divine orchestral choir of all the angels in heaven could compete.
He chimes my name in the language of the Unseelie and it makes my ears ring until my mind is emptied of all thought, until my eyes are incapable of beholding any vision other than ...
TEASER 2---Keeping this one short and sweet as I'm heading up to MegaCon this morning! Have I told you guys lately how much I love writing ICED? Dani is hands-down the most unpredictable character I've ever written. There's a undiluted, bouyant joy in telling her story. No rules apply. I just follow her flamboyant heart and watch all hell break loose. My goal is to make you forget about wanting more of Mac & Barrons by the time you finish reading ICED because you can't wait for more of Dani. I bet you think I can't.
He isn't what he's pretending to be with her. I watch him all the time. I'm going to be there when he stops pretending. I'm going to be her bulletproof vest, her shield, her fallen fucking angel, whether she wants one or not. He's pretending he's almost human. He's no more human than me.
Teaser 3------
“You’re not responsible for the world just because you’re more capable.”
“Course I am. That’s what more capable folks do.”
“You could ask me to teach you.”
“Huh?” This night is getting weird in a hurry. “Teach me like you’re teaching a class or something? What are you going to call it: You-too-can-be-a sociopath-101?”
“It would be more like a graduate level class.”
I start to snicker. His sense of humor sneaks up on you. Then I remember who’s talking and bite it off.
“You want to be faster, stronger, smarter. Ask me to teach you.”
“I ain’t asking you for nothing. And you might be faster and stronger. For now. No way you’re smarter.”
“Your choice. But turn around because you’re not leaving. It’s night, and you know what that means.”
“Like, it’s dark?”
“You’re with me until dawn.”
“Why dawn? You a vamp or a zombie or something that can’t stand the light?”
He freeze-frames away, moves in on the scene. “I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.”
Teaser 4
That, down there“—he points beyond the glass—“is a bump in the road, a test of temptation and fidelity. If he loves you, he will pass it with flying colors. Cruce is a test of your fucking soul.”
Teaser 5
Excerpt from ICED:
Ryodan doesn’t like Mac. He never has. She got between him and his best boy-bud. I give him a look. “I���ll tell you a secret, Ryodan. You mess with her, Barrons’ll kill you.” I drag a finger across my neck. “Just like that. You aren’t all that. Barrons’ll stomp your ass, hand’s down.”
He smiles faintly. “I’ll be damned. You have a crush on Barrons.”
“I do not have a crush—“
“You do, too. It’s all over your face. Anybody could see it.”
“Sometimes, boss, you’re just wrong.”
“I’m never wrong. You might as well take out a billboard. ‘Dani O’Malley thinks Jericho Barrons is hot.’ My offer to teach you is still open. Save you from future embarrassment. If I can see it on your face, he can, too. ”
“He never figured it out before,” I grumble then realize I just admitted it. Ryodan has a tricky way of wording things that makes you say things you didn’t mean to say. “Maybe I’ll ask Barrons to teach me,” I mutter and turn away from the stairs, heading for his office. I run smack into his chest. “Dude, move. Trying to get somewhere here.”
“No one but me is ever going to teach you, Dani.”
He touches me before I see it coming, has his hand under my chin, turning my face up. My shiver is instant and uncontrollable.
“That’s non-negotiable. You signed a contract with me that grants exclusivity. You won’t like it if you try to break it.”
.
I'm so excited that she is continuing the Fever series!!!! 5 more books, yippee!! I 'd love to read more about Ryodan.
TEASER 1--- From Karen Marie Moning FB page
Four nights he’s come to me, murmuring my name, making it an exquisite melody with which not even the divine orchestral choir of all the angels in heaven could compete.
He chimes my name in the language of the Unseelie and it makes my ears ring until my mind is emptied of all thought, until my eyes are incapable of beholding any vision other than ...
TEASER 2---Keeping this one short and sweet as I'm heading up to MegaCon this morning! Have I told you guys lately how much I love writing ICED? Dani is hands-down the most unpredictable character I've ever written. There's a undiluted, bouyant joy in telling her story. No rules apply. I just follow her flamboyant heart and watch all hell break loose. My goal is to make you forget about wanting more of Mac & Barrons by the time you finish reading ICED because you can't wait for more of Dani. I bet you think I can't.
He isn't what he's pretending to be with her. I watch him all the time. I'm going to be there when he stops pretending. I'm going to be her bulletproof vest, her shield, her fallen fucking angel, whether she wants one or not. He's pretending he's almost human. He's no more human than me.
Teaser 3------
“You’re not responsible for the world just because you’re more capable.”
“Course I am. That’s what more capable folks do.”
“You could ask me to teach you.”
“Huh?” This night is getting weird in a hurry. “Teach me like you’re teaching a class or something? What are you going to call it: You-too-can-be-a sociopath-101?”
“It would be more like a graduate level class.”
I start to snicker. His sense of humor sneaks up on you. Then I remember who’s talking and bite it off.
“You want to be faster, stronger, smarter. Ask me to teach you.”
“I ain’t asking you for nothing. And you might be faster and stronger. For now. No way you’re smarter.”
“Your choice. But turn around because you’re not leaving. It’s night, and you know what that means.”
“Like, it’s dark?”
“You’re with me until dawn.”
“Why dawn? You a vamp or a zombie or something that can’t stand the light?”
He freeze-frames away, moves in on the scene. “I like sex for breakfast, kid. I eat early and often.”
Teaser 4
That, down there“—he points beyond the glass—“is a bump in the road, a test of temptation and fidelity. If he loves you, he will pass it with flying colors. Cruce is a test of your fucking soul.”
Teaser 5
Excerpt from ICED:
Ryodan doesn’t like Mac. He never has. She got between him and his best boy-bud. I give him a look. “I���ll tell you a secret, Ryodan. You mess with her, Barrons’ll kill you.” I drag a finger across my neck. “Just like that. You aren’t all that. Barrons’ll stomp your ass, hand’s down.”
He smiles faintly. “I’ll be damned. You have a crush on Barrons.”
“I do not have a crush—“
“You do, too. It’s all over your face. Anybody could see it.”
“Sometimes, boss, you’re just wrong.”
“I’m never wrong. You might as well take out a billboard. ‘Dani O’Malley thinks Jericho Barrons is hot.’ My offer to teach you is still open. Save you from future embarrassment. If I can see it on your face, he can, too. ”
“He never figured it out before,” I grumble then realize I just admitted it. Ryodan has a tricky way of wording things that makes you say things you didn’t mean to say. “Maybe I’ll ask Barrons to teach me,” I mutter and turn away from the stairs, heading for his office. I run smack into his chest. “Dude, move. Trying to get somewhere here.”
“No one but me is ever going to teach you, Dani.”
He touches me before I see it coming, has his hand under my chin, turning my face up. My shiver is instant and uncontrollable.
“That’s non-negotiable. You signed a contract with me that grants exclusivity. You won’t like it if you try to break it.”
.
March 18, 2013
Dani/Ryodan/Christian/Lor/Jo/Kat/Dance
First read Oct 2012
See Sophia and I discuss how feck we felt and what the feck we think at Fiction Vixen Book Reviews
I was afraid I wouldn't like Dani because her voice in the previous books was just short of annoying. I loved her. It didn't take long for her to grow on me.
Love Christian. He made me laugh even if he is bat shit crazy.
KMM has ruined me for all other books. Again. I hate it when she does that. And I hate her fecking cliffhangers. Burned is so far away.
First read Oct 2012
See Sophia and I discuss how feck we felt and what the feck we think at Fiction Vixen Book Reviews
I was afraid I wouldn't like Dani because her voice in the previous books was just short of annoying. I loved her. It didn't take long for her to grow on me.
Love Christian. He made me laugh even if he is bat shit crazy.
KMM has ruined me for all other books. Again. I hate it when she does that. And I hate her fecking cliffhangers. Burned is so far away.
February 7, 2018
Actual rating: 2.5 Stars
I'm saving you the trouble to read it, here's all you need to know to skip this one and go straight to Burned:
________________________________
Too many things.
This book is a big mistake. I'll tell you what I think of it in a minute just let me be very clear about this: there's no logical explanation for the direction KMM's taken with Iced. And god have mercy on her soul because I'm decided to read Burned and it better be good or there will be a bloodshed.
Okay, first of all, the elephant in the room.
The Fastest Way to Scare Away your Loyal Readers
Step 1: Sexualize your fourteen year old character and put her around a bunch of bloody pervs.
Step 2: Congrats, you did it. It's disgusting enough.
We can talk about how preternatural beings are obviously much older than the MCs and we can agree that Christian's behavior (who is actually just a few years older than Dani) was completely against himself because he was changing to be an UP BUT it's hard to explain people who haven't read this series how come we're talking about men claiming a fourteen year old kid as theirs.
However I should admit that while everybody wants a piece of Dani, she's actually pretty clueless about it. She doesn't care, she dismisses Christian's mumblings about whatever that fucker says to her. She's in a place where it's hard to understand her, I do think she's more than it meets the eye . She's just a kid, she's immature but she's a survivor. She's more capable to protect herself and others than Jo, for example. She's smart, she knows the real world and won't fall for sweet words.
About Christian:
I like Ryodan, he is the sociopathic version of Barrons. What do you expect? I'm immune to jackassery. He's a douchebag, a perverted asshole but that's the way these guys are so why would you be surprised to see him being violent and possessive? Honestly, the things I had to bear with Jericho... Yeah, he treats her like shit but keeps her alive. He's not there to be his friend, father, lover. I asked around if anyone actually remembered a scene where Ryodan expresses sexual attraction to Dani but we couldn't find any. He talks about the potential woman she could be but Barrons would've said the same thing about Mac if he'd found her as a teenager. And we'd like to think that he'd have waited. Just as Ryodan is.
Damn it, I'm not trying to play devil's advocate here but I do like him.
And this is why I'm in big trouble, ready? after the revolting first half of this book, somehow I actually enjoyed the last 100 pages.
WHAT THE FUCK, RIGHT? But I did.
Lor was so sweet and funny it was hard for me to imagine him as one of Barrons' nine. The iPod scene was completely out of this world, I loved it! Dancer, the cute nerdy, has obviously a dark, secret past and I can't wait to learn more about him.
I won't talk about the plot because I really don't give a damn about it, after Fever's adventures, it was just forgettable and trivial. Ridiculous to think a big guy like Ryo was in need of Dani's help for that. The best of the book? Mac and Barrons' cameos. I honestly think they're the messiahs of this spin-off. Dani needs help.
I'm saving you the trouble to read it, here's all you need to know to skip this one and go straight to Burned:
________________________________
Too many things.
This book is a big mistake. I'll tell you what I think of it in a minute just let me be very clear about this: there's no logical explanation for the direction KMM's taken with Iced. And god have mercy on her soul because I'm decided to read Burned and it better be good or there will be a bloodshed.
Okay, first of all, the elephant in the room.
The Fastest Way to Scare Away your Loyal Readers
Step 1: Sexualize your fourteen year old character and put her around a bunch of bloody pervs.
Step 2: Congrats, you did it. It's disgusting enough.
We can talk about how preternatural beings are obviously much older than the MCs and we can agree that Christian's behavior (who is actually just a few years older than Dani) was completely against himself because he was changing to be an UP BUT it's hard to explain people who haven't read this series how come we're talking about men claiming a fourteen year old kid as theirs.
However I should admit that while everybody wants a piece of Dani, she's actually pretty clueless about it. She doesn't care, she dismisses Christian's mumblings about whatever that fucker says to her. She's in a place where it's hard to understand her, I do think she's more than it meets the eye . She's just a kid, she's immature but she's a survivor. She's more capable to protect herself and others than Jo, for example. She's smart, she knows the real world and won't fall for sweet words.
About Christian:
I like Ryodan, he is the sociopathic version of Barrons. What do you expect? I'm immune to jackassery. He's a douchebag, a perverted asshole but that's the way these guys are so why would you be surprised to see him being violent and possessive? Honestly, the things I had to bear with Jericho... Yeah, he treats her like shit but keeps her alive. He's not there to be his friend, father, lover. I asked around if anyone actually remembered a scene where Ryodan expresses sexual attraction to Dani but we couldn't find any. He talks about the potential woman she could be but Barrons would've said the same thing about Mac if he'd found her as a teenager. And we'd like to think that he'd have waited. Just as Ryodan is.
Damn it, I'm not trying to play devil's advocate here but I do like him.
And this is why I'm in big trouble, ready? after the revolting first half of this book, somehow I actually enjoyed the last 100 pages.
WHAT THE FUCK, RIGHT? But I did.
Lor was so sweet and funny it was hard for me to imagine him as one of Barrons' nine. The iPod scene was completely out of this world, I loved it! Dancer, the cute nerdy, has obviously a dark, secret past and I can't wait to learn more about him.
I won't talk about the plot because I really don't give a damn about it, after Fever's adventures, it was just forgettable and trivial. Ridiculous to think a big guy like Ryo was in need of Dani's help for that. The best of the book? Mac and Barrons' cameos. I honestly think they're the messiahs of this spin-off. Dani needs help.
November 22, 2014
4 Mega Stars
For Dani "Mega" O'Malley and all the girls out there who want to grow up and be somebody's hero.
"I glimpse things through the open doors of clubs that no fourteen-year-old should see. But then, that's been the story of my life..."
It's the year 1 AWC, a year after the walls between Faery and Earth crashed and the nightmare began. We witnessed the Fall through Mac's eyes. No we witness the consequences through Dani's and it's war and hell.
Humans are dying, slayed and preyed upon by the Unseelie. Dark creatures, revolting or breathtaking beautiful. The Sinsar Dubh and Cruce are once again imprisoned but that's doesn't stop the destruction of human world.
Do be afraid of the dark. And if you are thinking there might be a monster under the bed or in your closet, there probably is. Get up and check. Welcome to Planet Earth.
Karen Marie Moning has created an intricate dark world full of danger and conflict. A precarious balance that hangs from a thread. Noone is good or bad. Each of her heroes has his own agenda. They have made mistakes and paid for them in blood and tears. Both are seelie and unseelie at the same time; our heroes stand firmly in the twilight between black and white. We love them, but they are killers and bastards, angels and demons.
And Dani. A teenager. Full of herself, entitled, annoying, hormonal and temperamental. We love to hate her like our kid sister, that we would lay the world at her feet. She is foolishly heroic but mostly afraid of her loneliness. So yes, I agree with most of the readers, I wanted to smack her.
But then I needed to hug her and tuck her somewhere safe.
This book worked for me as an interlude. We needed a break between Barrons and Ryodan (yes, I am on his side. Blame my hormones!). We would have died of sexual frustration and orgasm overload otherwise. So this one, sets the scene for the next one(s). The big showdown between Ryodan and Christian and maybe Dancer(?) (Seriously, though, you guys, it's weird to perv over a 14 year old. I see the potential but please cool it down!). Dani and Mac and Barrons. And the sidhe-seers. Who will hopefully grow a pair, stop bickering and start kicking some serious ass.
So, until Burned hits the shelves...
For Dani "Mega" O'Malley and all the girls out there who want to grow up and be somebody's hero.
"I glimpse things through the open doors of clubs that no fourteen-year-old should see. But then, that's been the story of my life..."
It's the year 1 AWC, a year after the walls between Faery and Earth crashed and the nightmare began. We witnessed the Fall through Mac's eyes. No we witness the consequences through Dani's and it's war and hell.
Humans are dying, slayed and preyed upon by the Unseelie. Dark creatures, revolting or breathtaking beautiful. The Sinsar Dubh and Cruce are once again imprisoned but that's doesn't stop the destruction of human world.
Do be afraid of the dark. And if you are thinking there might be a monster under the bed or in your closet, there probably is. Get up and check. Welcome to Planet Earth.
Karen Marie Moning has created an intricate dark world full of danger and conflict. A precarious balance that hangs from a thread. Noone is good or bad. Each of her heroes has his own agenda. They have made mistakes and paid for them in blood and tears. Both are seelie and unseelie at the same time; our heroes stand firmly in the twilight between black and white. We love them, but they are killers and bastards, angels and demons.
And Dani. A teenager. Full of herself, entitled, annoying, hormonal and temperamental. We love to hate her like our kid sister, that we would lay the world at her feet. She is foolishly heroic but mostly afraid of her loneliness. So yes, I agree with most of the readers, I wanted to smack her.
But then I needed to hug her and tuck her somewhere safe.
This book worked for me as an interlude. We needed a break between Barrons and Ryodan (yes, I am on his side. Blame my hormones!). We would have died of sexual frustration and orgasm overload otherwise. So this one, sets the scene for the next one(s). The big showdown between Ryodan and Christian and maybe Dancer(?) (Seriously, though, you guys, it's weird to perv over a 14 year old. I see the potential but please cool it down!). Dani and Mac and Barrons. And the sidhe-seers. Who will hopefully grow a pair, stop bickering and start kicking some serious ass.
So, until Burned hits the shelves...
February 26, 2017
Final rating: 1/5 stars
EDIT: i honestly want to rewrite the whole review. I look at this and cry. I am also thinking of dropping it to 1 star. Not two stars.
EDIT 2: This review has been rewriten, because I was writing this in my first review start and it was completely bad. So here is a review.
I am disappointed. It failed to deliver the awesomeness and greatness of first 5 Fever series books. Was there a need to make more books? No. The story ended up perfectly, but authors love doing spin offs. Not that I can blame them, but sometimes those spin-offs and sequels really don't have to exist.
This was a start of a new part. Dani is the main character this time and I expected to see Mac and Barrons, and yes, while they did appear... they did so in .
In the main series I liked Dani. I was definitely excited to see what this time we will have, but I was so disappointed I was horrified by it too.
The plot was okayish, but not enough to keep me from getting myself irritated by the sheer existence of characters, especially - Dani - because I hated reading her POV that much. She became unbearable.
It was just a pointless addition to the series.
*minor spoilers, nothing to worry about*
CHARACTERS :
♦ DANI :
Dani became irritating, self obsessed and absorbed and centered, constantly reckless, overconfident and just... Sigh. It was too much for me. I hate to see myself hate main character (especially women) considering how rare it is to have a fantastic woman character in both adult and young adult books (especially young adult).
There were too many "I am the MEGA" parts, "i am indestructible" parts. What happened to Dani that i used to read about? Where did that awesome girl go? Not to mention her constant use of "Feck" instead of "fuck". Why don't you just let her say fuck? I used to swear a lot when I was her age. And this writer is adult book writer. So...?
There are no redeeming points for her. If i have to read more books from her POV I will personally make sure to get rid of this series from my life. I loved her once, but now she is gone intolerable.
♦ CHRISTIAN :
Christian is turning into Unseelie prince, and thus, we have Fever story repeated again: Love triangle with Ryodan (?), Christian (he even declared Dani his bride), and Dani (which hates the both of them) thus making it unbearable. But wait, there is Dancer too! He also likes "the Mega (annoyance)". I am not sure why the attention on Dani.
So, Christian is way to sure Dani's gotta be his (nevermind the fact that she is just 14 years old), and he is to obsessive, irritating to the core, impossible and just... Sigh. I have no words. Another potentially amazing character is ruined. My point was that he is turning out to be just like V'lane in Fever.
WHAT THE HELL???????? I MEAN SERIOUSLY????????????
♦ RYODAN :
Ryodan: I don't understand wtf is wrong with him. Barrons had his faults but... Ryodan is 30000000x worse than Barrons. Self centered as well and completely irritating and unbearable - I actually think they all are. Except for Dancer (maybe?).
Another character who is too obsessed with Dani (why is that? Why is everyone obsessing over her) and at the same time is obsessed with Jo. I have no idea....First he forbids Barrons to be with Mac, now he goes and bonds (sleeps with her and such) himself with Jo, and alas, thus gets compassionate side revealed. NOT! Not to mention that he abuses Dani and i dont like that! Shoo, shoo, go away!
♦ Jo :
Jo. I have no comment. Another possibly good character thrown into water.
♦ DANCER :
It is sad to see how he had so little pages in this book. He was maybe the only character worth it in the whole series. A cute nerd and genious and actually normal. Another man who fell in love with Dani, but I actually approve of this one.
OVERALL :
Probably the best are the Icing and the reason it was happening, and also The Crimson Hag . I think all the parts with those two were awesome.
Conclusion: The characters were at fault here, because i didn't find anything else annoying or boring. The story itself was pretty much interesting... This could have been so much better.
You can love a story even if you don't like the characters, but when you dislike almost the whole cast... You reconsider if this series is even worth it.
P.S. Maybe best part of the book was when they commented about music groups. I laughed so much. I know them all, lol.
REVIEW(S) RELATED TO THIS BOOK:
◉ My review for Shadowfever (Fever, #5)
EDIT: i honestly want to rewrite the whole review. I look at this and cry. I am also thinking of dropping it to 1 star. Not two stars.
EDIT 2: This review has been rewriten, because I was writing this in my first review start and it was completely bad. So here is a review.
I am disappointed. It failed to deliver the awesomeness and greatness of first 5 Fever series books. Was there a need to make more books? No. The story ended up perfectly, but authors love doing spin offs. Not that I can blame them, but sometimes those spin-offs and sequels really don't have to exist.
This was a start of a new part. Dani is the main character this time and I expected to see Mac and Barrons, and yes, while they did appear... they did so in .
In the main series I liked Dani. I was definitely excited to see what this time we will have, but I was so disappointed I was horrified by it too.
The plot was okayish, but not enough to keep me from getting myself irritated by the sheer existence of characters, especially - Dani - because I hated reading her POV that much. She became unbearable.
It was just a pointless addition to the series.
*minor spoilers, nothing to worry about*
CHARACTERS :
♦ DANI :
Dani became irritating, self obsessed and absorbed and centered, constantly reckless, overconfident and just... Sigh. It was too much for me. I hate to see myself hate main character (especially women) considering how rare it is to have a fantastic woman character in both adult and young adult books (especially young adult).
There were too many "I am the MEGA" parts, "i am indestructible" parts. What happened to Dani that i used to read about? Where did that awesome girl go? Not to mention her constant use of "Feck" instead of "fuck". Why don't you just let her say fuck? I used to swear a lot when I was her age. And this writer is adult book writer. So...?
There are no redeeming points for her. If i have to read more books from her POV I will personally make sure to get rid of this series from my life. I loved her once, but now she is gone intolerable.
♦ CHRISTIAN :
Christian is turning into Unseelie prince, and thus, we have Fever story repeated again: Love triangle with Ryodan (?), Christian (he even declared Dani his bride), and Dani (which hates the both of them) thus making it unbearable. But wait, there is Dancer too! He also likes "the Mega (annoyance)". I am not sure why the attention on Dani.
So, Christian is way to sure Dani's gotta be his (nevermind the fact that she is just 14 years old), and he is to obsessive, irritating to the core, impossible and just... Sigh. I have no words. Another potentially amazing character is ruined. My point was that he is turning out to be just like V'lane in Fever.
"She’s pale and still as death. It’s a disturbing turn-on."
WHAT THE HELL???????? I MEAN SERIOUSLY????????????
♦ RYODAN :
Ryodan: I don't understand wtf is wrong with him. Barrons had his faults but... Ryodan is 30000000x worse than Barrons. Self centered as well and completely irritating and unbearable - I actually think they all are. Except for Dancer (maybe?).
Another character who is too obsessed with Dani (why is that? Why is everyone obsessing over her) and at the same time is obsessed with Jo. I have no idea....First he forbids Barrons to be with Mac, now he goes and bonds (sleeps with her and such) himself with Jo, and alas, thus gets compassionate side revealed. NOT! Not to mention that he abuses Dani and i dont like that! Shoo, shoo, go away!
♦ Jo :
Jo. I have no comment. Another possibly good character thrown into water.
♦ DANCER :
It is sad to see how he had so little pages in this book. He was maybe the only character worth it in the whole series. A cute nerd and genious and actually normal. Another man who fell in love with Dani, but I actually approve of this one.
OVERALL :
Probably the best are the Icing and the reason it was happening, and also The Crimson Hag . I think all the parts with those two were awesome.
Conclusion: The characters were at fault here, because i didn't find anything else annoying or boring. The story itself was pretty much interesting... This could have been so much better.
You can love a story even if you don't like the characters, but when you dislike almost the whole cast... You reconsider if this series is even worth it.
P.S. Maybe best part of the book was when they commented about music groups. I laughed so much. I know them all, lol.
"I got almost ten thousand songs on it! Motorhead to Mozart, Linkin Park and Liszt, Velvet Revolver to Wagner, Puscifer and Pavarotti and everything in between. I even got show tunes and cartoon soundtracks!
Ten minutes later Lor says, “What is this crap? Who let her load the iPod?”
“Nobody else brought one,” I say. “I chose awesome music.”
“Where the hell is Hendrix on this thing?” Lor takes it out of the sound dock and scrolls through it, looking pissed. “By whose definition is this music?”
Jo says, “Did you get any Muse? I love Muse.”
“If I’d known you all had such crappy taste in songs, I would have brought more earplugs,” I say. “Dissing my taste. Like Hendrix is even listenable. And Muse is something you do.”
“Well, Disturbed,” Jo says, “is something you are.”
“And Godsmacked is something you get,” Dancer says. “But hopefully not tonight.”
“Don’t you have any Mötley Crüe or Van Halen?” Lor says. “Maybe ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’?”
“How about some Flogging Molly,” Christian says. “Dani, my darling, how could you not like the ‘Devil’s Dance Floor’? And what about Zombie?”
“I got ‘Dragula’ and ‘Living Dead Girl,’ ” I say defensively.
“Bloody hell, ‘Living Dead Girl’ is one of my favorites!” Christian says, and grabs the iPod from Lor and starts scrolling to it.
I snatch it and hold it behind my back. “Don’t mess with my lineup. Nobody else thought to bring an iPod. That means I’m in charge.”
Ryodan takes the iPod from me so fast it’s there one sec, gone the next.
“Hey, give it back!”
He scrolls through the playlist. “What’s the deal with all the Linkin Park, for fuck’s sake.”
“Dudes, we need noise. Quit taking the iPod off the dock.” Dancer snatches the iPod from Ryodan and puts it back on the dock. “And Mega has a crush on Chester.”
“I do not!”
“Do too, Mega.”
“He’s like, old!”
“How old?” Christian says.
“Like at least thirty or something!”
Lor laughs. “Fucking ancient, ain’t it, kid?”
“Dude,” I agree. I like Lor.
“You got any Adele?” Jo says hopefully.
“Not a single song,” I say happily. “Got some Nicki Minaj, though.”
“Somebody kill me now,” Ryodan says and closes his eyes.
REVIEW(S) RELATED TO THIS BOOK:
◉ My review for Shadowfever (Fever, #5)
February 8, 2015
❤
BR with my lovely friend Stacy
WARNING: SPOILER TAGS USED LAZILY.
WARNING: SWEAR WORDS.
There's never a dull moment in the Mega-verse.
Let's be honest guys, I thought this book was going to be fucking horrible. I was dissing this before I even started. Dani was already pissing me off, Ryodan was radiating some serious asshole energy and the molesty vibes from Christian were so strong you could touch theminappropriately. Then I actually read it. Dudes. Dudes.
The Fever Series really is one of my most loved series. KMM has created a world so exquisitely written I couldn't help but fall in love with…everything. From the streets of AWC Dublin to the deliciously dark subclubs of Chesters and everything in between. This includes Iced. Yeah. I liked it, way too much actually.
While Iced is not on the same level as Dark/Blood/Fae/Dream/Shadow, it's still damn good to me for the first in a trilogy. Yes, the MC is a smart-mouthed fourteen year old girl. Yes, there is a subtle vying for her affection between a twenty-two year old and another man that's easily pushing a thousand. No, I didn't find it disturbing. Let's move on.
As far as the plot goes, although not as strong as the Sinsar Dubh/Mac, it was still solidly built and perfect for Dani. It's 1 AWC (After the Wall Crash) and the streets of Dublin are teeming with Fae. Dani is a gifted sidhe-seer - she has super speed, strength and hearing, and she possesses one of only two weapons known to kill Fae. Basically she's the city's self-appointed vigilante and exudes a high level of badassery for a little chum. Something is freezing parts of Dublin - encasing Fae, human and everything around it in ice and leaving a destructive level of hoar frost in its wake, plunging the city into an early and perpetual state of winter. Of course, Dani is our heroine and will effectively swoop in to save the day.
I thought the whole chain of events was cleverly thought out and interesting, but at times it felt a little twiddly thumbs, which is why the subplots and different perspectives were good because they added a bit of chew. Kat's perspective made me appreciate her character a bit more and Christian's POV was sexually perverse but strangely engaging. Unlike a lot of people, I actually liked him. I find character transitions too exciting.
"Like, how long?" Christian says, and his voice is weirdly guttural. I look at him. He's staring down past the abbey at the sidhe-seers and the look on his face is pure, sex-starved . Kaleidoscopic tattoos rush under his skin. His jeans are...wow. Okay. Don't look there.
True to the whole Feverish feel I get when reading these books, Iced is sexual without being taboo. It's dark but with a velvet lining. Dani is essentially a child, but her experiences are anything but. Still, she is perfectly innocent in her mind and you can see it in the way she responds to all the sexual deviancy and temptation.
I know that when he has sex he laughs like the world is a perfect place. And when he did that, my hands curled into fists because I thought about touching his face like maybe I could catch joy in my hands and hold it.
She's fourteen. All she wants is her sword and some frosted pop tarts. I dunno guys, I really liked her. She's gamine, funny, sarcastic, a touch facetious, and - contrary to the way she talks - really intelligent. She has the potential to be the best fucking character ever and I can't wait to see what KMM does with her.
He doesn't get that I'm not interested in a superhero boyfriend. I'm going to be the superhero that can kick his ass from one end of Dublin to the other.
WARNING: SPOILER TAGS USED LAZILY.
WARNING: SWEAR WORDS.
There's never a dull moment in the Mega-verse.
Let's be honest guys, I thought this book was going to be fucking horrible. I was dissing this before I even started. Dani was already pissing me off, Ryodan was radiating some serious asshole energy and the molesty vibes from Christian were so strong you could touch them
The Fever Series really is one of my most loved series. KMM has created a world so exquisitely written I couldn't help but fall in love with…everything. From the streets of AWC Dublin to the deliciously dark subclubs of Chesters and everything in between. This includes Iced. Yeah. I liked it, way too much actually.
While Iced is not on the same level as Dark/Blood/Fae/Dream/Shadow, it's still damn good to me for the first in a trilogy. Yes, the MC is a smart-mouthed fourteen year old girl. Yes, there is a subtle vying for her affection between a twenty-two year old and another man that's easily pushing a thousand. No, I didn't find it disturbing. Let's move on.
As far as the plot goes, although not as strong as the Sinsar Dubh/Mac, it was still solidly built and perfect for Dani. It's 1 AWC (After the Wall Crash) and the streets of Dublin are teeming with Fae. Dani is a gifted sidhe-seer - she has super speed, strength and hearing, and she possesses one of only two weapons known to kill Fae. Basically she's the city's self-appointed vigilante and exudes a high level of badassery for a little chum. Something is freezing parts of Dublin - encasing Fae, human and everything around it in ice and leaving a destructive level of hoar frost in its wake, plunging the city into an early and perpetual state of winter. Of course, Dani is our heroine and will effectively swoop in to save the day.
I thought the whole chain of events was cleverly thought out and interesting, but at times it felt a little twiddly thumbs, which is why the subplots and different perspectives were good because they added a bit of chew. Kat's perspective made me appreciate her character a bit more and Christian's POV was sexually perverse but strangely engaging. Unlike a lot of people, I actually liked him. I find character transitions too exciting.
"Like, how long?" Christian says, and his voice is weirdly guttural. I look at him. He's staring down past the abbey at the sidhe-seers and the look on his face is pure, sex-starved . Kaleidoscopic tattoos rush under his skin. His jeans are...wow. Okay. Don't look there.
True to the whole Feverish feel I get when reading these books, Iced is sexual without being taboo. It's dark but with a velvet lining. Dani is essentially a child, but her experiences are anything but. Still, she is perfectly innocent in her mind and you can see it in the way she responds to all the sexual deviancy and temptation.
I know that when he has sex he laughs like the world is a perfect place. And when he did that, my hands curled into fists because I thought about touching his face like maybe I could catch joy in my hands and hold it.
She's fourteen. All she wants is her sword and some frosted pop tarts. I dunno guys, I really liked her. She's gamine, funny, sarcastic, a touch facetious, and - contrary to the way she talks - really intelligent. She has the potential to be the best fucking character ever and I can't wait to see what KMM does with her.
He doesn't get that I'm not interested in a superhero boyfriend. I'm going to be the superhero that can kick his ass from one end of Dublin to the other.
December 27, 2014
This review can also be found at Carole's Random Life.
2.5 Stars
This was the second time that I have read this book and let's just say it was an eye opening experience for me. I read this book the first time right after its release and gave it 4 stars. I did not bother writing reviews at that time so I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided that this was a 4 star book. I think I was just being an idiot because this book is nowhere near a 4 star book. I do remember that I could not wait to get my hands on this book when it was first released and I was desperate for a new book set in the Fever world. It took me a week to read this the first time which was highly unusual so I suspect I found it boring then but did not want to admit it to myself at the time.
I went into this re-read expecting that I would like this book. I have very recently read the first 5 books in the Fever series and now consider all them to be 5 star reads. This book is nowhere near as good as those first 5 book. This book has some very major problems that I could not overlook on this re-read.
Overly Sexual - The main character in this book is a very immature 14 year old girl and the topic of sex is constantly thrown in our face. People are having sex around her. People want to have sex with her. She has plans about how she wants to lose her virginity. Sex is fine. Sex with 14 year old girls is not fine. If you choose to write a book with a 14 year old girl as the main character, please try not to over sex the book.
Dani - I live with a 14 year old girl and must admit that they can very interesting. I thought Dani was especially annoying at times though. I got so sick of hearing about how she was a superhero, or the Mega, and if I have to hear her say two peas in the Mega pod again, I may be sick. I still can't figure out how this 14 year old girl was able to solve problems that immortal beings couldn't.
Ryodan - Ryodan is no Barrons. Not. Even. Close. Barrons is able to pull off the whole asshole that everyone loves in the first 5 books. Ryodan just seems like an asshole. Not only that, what is going on with his obsession with Dani. She is a child. The fact that he is waiting for her is just wrong.
Christian - What has happened to Christian? I loved Christian when we first met him and was sad to see him changing. He has changed and his change bothers me less than his obsession with Dani. It is just weird and sick because let's remember - Dani is 14 years old. Again, waiting for her is just wrong.
Jo & Kat - Where are the strong women we saw in the previous books? I missed those women. I really don't know who these two are. They added nothing to the story in my opinion and the parts that were told from Kat's point of view were pretty bad. They have both turned into wimpy women focused on sex. Such a shame.
It's Boring! - The first half of this book is incredibly boring. It was sleep inducing for me. I would be reading and simply fall asleep. I stayed up half the night on a work night to finish Shadowfever but fell asleep constantly reading this book.
I didn't hate everything about the book. I did think that the story picked up in the second half and I didn't find it boring once that happened. The ending was rather exciting but there was never a point in the book where I felt like I couldn't put it down.
I thought that Dancer and Lor were the best characters in this book. Dancer is just a few years older than Dani and he was a great friend to her. Dancer acted like a friend to Dani without references to sex. It is a shame that others in the book couldn't have done the same thing. Lor was Lor. Lor is an unapologetic asshole. Lor was often the one who actually gave Dani some decent advice or saved the day. I guess I like assholes because I really liked Lor in this book.
Right now, I would recommend that fans of the series skip this book. I really hate it when a series that I love goes off the tracks. I am afraid that this is the case with this book. I hope that the next book will be better than this trainwreck.
2.5 Stars
This was the second time that I have read this book and let's just say it was an eye opening experience for me. I read this book the first time right after its release and gave it 4 stars. I did not bother writing reviews at that time so I have no idea what I was thinking when I decided that this was a 4 star book. I think I was just being an idiot because this book is nowhere near a 4 star book. I do remember that I could not wait to get my hands on this book when it was first released and I was desperate for a new book set in the Fever world. It took me a week to read this the first time which was highly unusual so I suspect I found it boring then but did not want to admit it to myself at the time.
I went into this re-read expecting that I would like this book. I have very recently read the first 5 books in the Fever series and now consider all them to be 5 star reads. This book is nowhere near as good as those first 5 book. This book has some very major problems that I could not overlook on this re-read.
Overly Sexual - The main character in this book is a very immature 14 year old girl and the topic of sex is constantly thrown in our face. People are having sex around her. People want to have sex with her. She has plans about how she wants to lose her virginity. Sex is fine. Sex with 14 year old girls is not fine. If you choose to write a book with a 14 year old girl as the main character, please try not to over sex the book.
Dani - I live with a 14 year old girl and must admit that they can very interesting. I thought Dani was especially annoying at times though. I got so sick of hearing about how she was a superhero, or the Mega, and if I have to hear her say two peas in the Mega pod again, I may be sick. I still can't figure out how this 14 year old girl was able to solve problems that immortal beings couldn't.
Ryodan - Ryodan is no Barrons. Not. Even. Close. Barrons is able to pull off the whole asshole that everyone loves in the first 5 books. Ryodan just seems like an asshole. Not only that, what is going on with his obsession with Dani. She is a child. The fact that he is waiting for her is just wrong.
Christian - What has happened to Christian? I loved Christian when we first met him and was sad to see him changing. He has changed and his change bothers me less than his obsession with Dani. It is just weird and sick because let's remember - Dani is 14 years old. Again, waiting for her is just wrong.
Jo & Kat - Where are the strong women we saw in the previous books? I missed those women. I really don't know who these two are. They added nothing to the story in my opinion and the parts that were told from Kat's point of view were pretty bad. They have both turned into wimpy women focused on sex. Such a shame.
It's Boring! - The first half of this book is incredibly boring. It was sleep inducing for me. I would be reading and simply fall asleep. I stayed up half the night on a work night to finish Shadowfever but fell asleep constantly reading this book.
I didn't hate everything about the book. I did think that the story picked up in the second half and I didn't find it boring once that happened. The ending was rather exciting but there was never a point in the book where I felt like I couldn't put it down.
I thought that Dancer and Lor were the best characters in this book. Dancer is just a few years older than Dani and he was a great friend to her. Dancer acted like a friend to Dani without references to sex. It is a shame that others in the book couldn't have done the same thing. Lor was Lor. Lor is an unapologetic asshole. Lor was often the one who actually gave Dani some decent advice or saved the day. I guess I like assholes because I really liked Lor in this book.
Right now, I would recommend that fans of the series skip this book. I really hate it when a series that I love goes off the tracks. I am afraid that this is the case with this book. I hope that the next book will be better than this trainwreck.
January 8, 2015
I waited for this book, 'needed' this book for so long I was afraid to start it once I had it in my hands. I had so many expectations. I was peppered with doubts after reading some of the reviews. I know better, we can't all love the same books, it's impossible. But I hesitated and set it aside while I keep reading the reviews. Finally, I got off my, sheep herding arse and read the book ! Baaa, no more. LOL
I loved it, LOVED IT, it had all the beginnings of another edge of my seat series. I could see so many potential portals for her to jump into, the possibilities are amazing. The world has changed forever, none of the old rules stand. Life has to find a new path or extinguish.
The new Fae nasties are pure wicked, killing machines. They are so well written I could even smell one of them. (ICK) There are two unrelenting killers , only one will be finished and one will take more that one of the major characters lives. It's really wonderfully graphically gross !
Dani, the little red headed fire cracker is in no way a little girl. She is young in years, but aged in life lessons, her life has been brutal. She has grown up in a harsh ugly truth that horrifies the mother in me. Her past has hardened her, not blackened her heart. She cares for the ones around her, even when it's best not too. She understands the world she lives in. The Sex by Death Fae, the Unseelie, the Seelie, the beasts and their carnal desires, she knows of this part of her world. She needs to know this to survive. Her close 'friends' are not crossing the lines with her and she will not allow anyone to until she is ready. She is a character to cheer for, she is a survivor. I can't wait to see what she grows into.
The men, macho self absorbed ego driven alpha males plus ! Okay not fair, Dancer is soft, smart, beta material with the brain of a genius. Ryodan and Christian seem focused of protecting Dani from each other and the world. Christian wants her for one reason and Ryodan wants her for ? Perhaps just to be his Robin. I am sure it will become more clear as the series develops.
Short sell- Batman and Robin team up to fight Mr.Freeze.
Cliffhanger ending, muhahahahha. At least it was not a brutal one, more of a soft cliffhanger.
And oh my Goodies look at Ryo
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I can't wait for the next book !
1/8/2015-My second reading- I loved it more the second time. I slowed down noticed little details, little reactions of the characters. I love this author and could re-read her books many times without ever getting bored.
I feel the pressure not love this so much with all the controversy on Dani's age. I just don't see it, IMHO. We all have our POV's thankfully.
I loved it, LOVED IT, it had all the beginnings of another edge of my seat series. I could see so many potential portals for her to jump into, the possibilities are amazing. The world has changed forever, none of the old rules stand. Life has to find a new path or extinguish.
The new Fae nasties are pure wicked, killing machines. They are so well written I could even smell one of them. (ICK) There are two unrelenting killers , only one will be finished and one will take more that one of the major characters lives. It's really wonderfully graphically gross !
Dani, the little red headed fire cracker is in no way a little girl. She is young in years, but aged in life lessons, her life has been brutal. She has grown up in a harsh ugly truth that horrifies the mother in me. Her past has hardened her, not blackened her heart. She cares for the ones around her, even when it's best not too. She understands the world she lives in. The Sex by Death Fae, the Unseelie, the Seelie, the beasts and their carnal desires, she knows of this part of her world. She needs to know this to survive. Her close 'friends' are not crossing the lines with her and she will not allow anyone to until she is ready. She is a character to cheer for, she is a survivor. I can't wait to see what she grows into.
The men, macho self absorbed ego driven alpha males plus ! Okay not fair, Dancer is soft, smart, beta material with the brain of a genius. Ryodan and Christian seem focused of protecting Dani from each other and the world. Christian wants her for one reason and Ryodan wants her for ? Perhaps just to be his Robin. I am sure it will become more clear as the series develops.
Short sell- Batman and Robin team up to fight Mr.Freeze.
Cliffhanger ending, muhahahahha. At least it was not a brutal one, more of a soft cliffhanger.
And oh my Goodies look at Ryo
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I can't wait for the next book !
1/8/2015-My second reading- I loved it more the second time. I slowed down noticed little details, little reactions of the characters. I love this author and could re-read her books many times without ever getting bored.
I feel the pressure not love this so much with all the controversy on Dani's age. I just don't see it, IMHO. We all have our POV's thankfully.
December 12, 2021
☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
No spoilers and colorful language abound!
Let's just get this out: there is nothing extraordinary about Iced, as is true about many new novels. It features a mostly irrelevant plot tailor made to showcase these characters we are supposed to fall in love with or grow to hate with a deep loathing.
I have to admit I was pleasantly surprised how comfortable I found Dani's inner voice to be and was practically rejoicing that it wasn't what we had experienced in the Fever books. The innocence Dani shows every time she miscalculates the mens reaction to her makes me smile. It's the only bit of innocence she allows to show because she is simply unaware that she is wrong. It may be the only bit of her childhood that has remained in tact and I was happy to see KMM keep that thread throughout the entire book. Dani is so jaded and filled with teenage arrogance with some seriously deep trust issues, I couldn't help but root for her. All I can say is I cannot wait to see who she becomes in the coming books.
Ryodan is... well... frankly he's an asshole, but so are all of the 9 so that's not hard to accept. It's how he tries to cage her to keep her safe that enrages me, he tries to teach her lessons on how to treat him and how to act and it makes me sick. Dani made a reference in her head about not being a dog made to heal and just wish so much she would have fought harder against him. I can't really articulate how I feel about Ryodan, other than I'm forcing myself to stay neutral, for now, but there are times that I'm disgusted.
Last, and definitely most important, KMM needs to fix this nonsense with Christian/Unseelie Prince. Out all off the men circling Dani he is far and away the highest on the rapey scale. I don't care if he is turning into a demon or the 4th Unseelie Prince, or whatever-the-fuck, I DON'T CARE! Christian you need to fucking stop it.
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