Iced picks up the story the very day after the events of
Shadowfever, but from Dani’s point of view. Ryodan pays her another visit and lets her know that when he wants someone to do a job for him, it gets done. She tries fighting him, but after making the foolish mistake of killing fae in his business, Chester’s, he captures her and a friend of hers, Jo, just to make sure she’ll comply. What could this immortal want from a 14 year old? Well, it turns out that someone or something has been “icing” the city. A normal person couldn’t even enter those rooms without being frozen, but since Dani has the unexplained power of superspeed, as long as she keeps running when in those rooms, she’ll be fine. Ryodan needs her in particular because she’s an astute observer and he couldn’t find anyone above the age of 14 who was as astute as her, apparently. In the first portion of the book, Dani thinks about Mac a lot, but Mac is never seen.
We learn a lot more about Dani’s back story: like how her mother used to keep her caged and shackled, and sometimes even let her boyfriends near Dani. And of course, somehow Ryodan knows all this. When her mother died, Dani had been in a cage and it took Rowena a week to find her. It didn’t take Rowena long, however, to take advantage of Dani’s power and ignorance to start compelling her to do things that Dani thought were innocent, such as giving an old lady some extra “milk” in her cereal, but which actually ended up killing her.
While the story is mainly told from Dani’s point of view, we also get a few chapters from Christian and Kat.
I wanted to enjoy this, but it just starts off in a very confusing way. Dani says that it’s 1 AWC, meaning one year after the wall crash. But then she talks like the events from Shadowfever just happened yesterday, and those events happened at most, 6 months AWC. So she makes it seem like this book has jumped forward in time, and yet no time has passed since Shadowfever at the same time. Very confusing. I’m thinking it’s a case of the author not realizing the first year AWC would actually be year 0. *eyeroll*
Also, she repeatedly refers to Mac as toilet paper, I mean, TP, which supposedly in her mind stands for “that person,” but we all know stands for toilet paper so it’s all just incredibly immature. Especially considering the fact that she killed Mac’s sister and doesn’t even really own up to it. On the other hand, Mac says she has let it go because she realizes Rowena compelled Dani to do it… so why will it take another two books for Mac and Dani to be friends again? It all makes no sense and is one reason I don’t think I could ever consider KMM one of my favorite authors. Her writing is just far too confusing.
I’m also beginning to wonder about KMM’s grasp on the English language. Why doesn’t she get that the correct wording is “all of a sudden,” not “all the sudden.” Like wtf is up with that? Second, is her vocabulary so limited that she has to repeat this one stupid, incorrect phrase about 2309 times throughout the book? Just bad writing all around.
I enjoyed the Fever series enough despite all its flaws, but this is one book I won’t be re-reading. I’m so glad I didn’t pay for it, just got it from the library. I gave it one star because there was really nothing I enjoyed about the book. I forced myself through it hoping for a single Mac/Barrons scene but that didn’t happen.
Characters:
➽ Mac is hardly in this one. The first time she and Dani are even in the same room, it’s chapter 13 and Mac doesn’t even go up to Dani to talk? Why? And you’re telling me when Dani, Ryodan, and his crew face the Hoar Frost King, Barrons decided to just sit back and relax?
➽ Christian has just become something else, and not just physically. Not only is he growing wings and thinks he’s turning into an Unseelie Prince (which makes no sense… then how come everyone else who ate Unseelie isn’t doing the same?), but while he hates Mac for saving his life (which is another problem… if he hates that she saved his life, why doesn’t he just get rid of his life then? Easy. But he’s a big baby who can’t be thankful for what she did and accept responsibility and own up to what he’s becoming) and turning him into something he “hates,” he at the same time contradictorily decides that he hates “humans” and is very aggressive and hateful to them (to Dancer in particular). He is one walking, immature contradiction and his character just isn’t consistent. Just reason #983098 why I don’t think Karen Marie Moning is that good of a writer.
➽ Ryodan. Among many things I could point out, I will mention this scene: he slams Dani against a wall, and when she tries to move her hand to wipe blood from her face, “He crushes it in his fist so hard [her] bones grind together.” Ryodan is a monster. Not sure how KMM decided it was a good idea to turn him into a love interest? This is so sadistic.
➽ Jo. Dani says about her, “She’s glowing again like she won some kind of prize instead of got picked by a class-A sociopath to be his disposable lube.” And it turns out, they have been a “couple” for a month? Wtf? Why would Ryodan do that?
➽ Kat is stupidly hiding the fact that Cruce has a hold on her and talks to her in her dreams every night. Did she learn nothing from Rowena? She has a boyfriend named Sean, who is forced to work at Chester’s, but even after he’s free, he doesn’t come back to see her. When she goes to see Ryodan, we learn through him that she is an empath and she did not speak until she was nearly five because “the pain of the world’s emotions overwhelmed [her]upon birth.” She cried incessantly but never spoke. She was called autistic. It was only when Rowena came to her family and offered them a deal (that she would “draw Kat from her autistic shell,” but at the age of 18 she would be Rowena’s and come and live at the abbey. And how exactly does Ryodan know all of this?) And how does Ryodan know about Kat and Cruce? Can he actually read minds? So many questions, as usual, from KMM and no answers.
➽ Sean is Kat’s boyfriend and turns out he’s yet another O’Bannion. Apparently Kat’s mom was his nanny and that’s how they knew each other.
➽ Dancer. So far, he’s my favorite character in the series, but pretty sure Dani doesn’t end up with him, so that’s annoying. Kat says he harbors secrets so dark and deep even she can’t sense them.
Inconsistencies:
In Faefever, it took Barrons 4 days to go from being dead to findng Mac. How does Ryodan recover in less than two days in this one?
Ryodan wanted to kill Mac for knowing their secret, so why doesn’t he kill Dani? That’s a huge inconsistency that really irritates me. That makes Ryodan a hypocrite and this is a total plot contrivance.
Lack of Barrons in any scene with Ryodans. Throughout the Fever series, several times he’d leave and be at Chester’s with Ryodan.
