(4.5 stars.)

At the end of Faefever, Mac was brought low, her free will stolen by the schemes of the Lord Master and the powers of several Fae. In the early chapters of Dreamfever, Karen Marie Moning makes the unusual decision of switching to another point of view, that of Mac’s teenage friend Dani, who narrates the first few days after the walls between the worlds fall down. Dani’s style of narration can be a little jarring after one is accustomed to Mac’s voice, but these chapters give us an idea of what’s going on in the world while Mac is out of commission.

Four days later, Barrons comes for Mac. (We don’t learn till later why the delay, and certain other characters exploit that mystery for all they’re worth.) No one has ever recovered from being turned Pri-ya (a Fae sex addict), but Barrons has a plan to bring Mac back. For me, Dreamfever could be subtitled “The One Where Barrons Finally Won Me Over.” Is he still a jerk? Sure. But after the first 60-something pages of this book, I no longer have doubts about his feelings toward Mac or his determination to protect her. Through Mac’s rather addled point of view, we see a new side of Barrons. (view spoiler)[He’s surprisingly funny (Tubthumping!) and it’s also clear that the whole situation is tearing him up. He wants Mac to recover, but at the same time, he knows that when she recovers, so will her distrust of him. There’s a sexual aspect too, but the sexuality is almost the saddest thing of all, because that’s not how anyone (Mac, Barrons, or the reader) wanted this to happen. These scenes are touching enough that I felt teary a couple of times. (hide spoiler)]

Then, with Mac back to her old self (though a more hardened version of herself) Moning expands the story. In the first three books, up until the penultimate scene in Faefever, this was a fairly personal tale. The larger world was threatened, but the focus was mainly on Mac and the small circle of people she knew. Most of humanity was oblivious to the plot events. Not so here. As Mac reenters the world, she learns what has happened in her absence. When she sees the map showing all the new Dark Zones and the number estimating the Earth’s current population, it’s chilling. This battle just got much bigger.

I felt bogged down briefly in the scenes of sidhe-seer politics. Later, though, I realized the problem was not that I didn’t like these scenes, but that I was so caught up in another plot point that I wanted the story to get back to that instead! I told myself to be more Zen about it, and was able to enjoy the moment more fully.

Mac learns more about the history of the sidhe-seers and about her own family, both blood and adoptive. Then, while trying to respond to a dire threat, Mac finds herself spirited into a Fae realm that’s just as seductively dangerous — and for much the same reasons — as J.K. Rowling’s Mirror of Erised. From here, she has some adventures that would be more expected in a high fantasy than in an urban fantasy. Moning shows plenty of creativity here, plus a heightened ability to write descriptive prose.

Dreamfever ends on the mother of all cliffhangers. Things looked devastating, but I kept reminding myself myself that these books have always been full of fairy-tale references. The final scene of Dreamfever is reminiscent of a particular fairy-tale scene, and in the tale, things come out OK in the end. My fingers were crossed going into Shadowfever...