Twisted Kingdom

MacKayla Lane’s life is good. She has great friends, a decent job, and a car that breaks down only every other week or so. In other words, she’s your perfectly ordinary twenty-first-century woman. Or so she thinks…until something extraordinary happens.

When her sister is murdered, leaving a single clue to her death–a cryptic message on Mac’s cell phone–Mac journeys to Ireland in search of answers. The quest to find her sister’s killer draws her into a shadowy realm where nothing is as it seems, where good and evil wear the same treacherously seductive mask. She is soon faced with an even greater challenge: staying alive long enough to learn how to handle a power she had no idea she possessed–a gift that allows her to see beyond the world of man, into the dangerous realm of the Fae….

As Mac delves deeper into the mystery of her sister’s death, her every move is shadowed by the dark, mysterious Jericho, a man with no past and only mockery for a future. As she begins to close in on the truth, the ruthless Vlane–an alpha Fae who makes sex an addiction for human women–closes in on her. And as the boundary between worlds begins to crumble, Mac’s true mission becomes clear: find the elusive Sinsar Dubh before someone else claims the all-powerful Dark Book–because whoever gets to it first holds nothing less than complete control of the very fabric of both worlds in their hands…

This was one of those books where first person narration was a huge disadvantage to the story because the story slowly unfolded through Mac’s eyes, and Mac was, simply put, too stupid to live. There’s just no other way to say it. She’s described as a 22-year-old blonde from Georgia, who grew up pretty sheltered. Thoroughout the story, there were numerous mentions of how she looked like Barbie; how pretty she was and how much she loved the color pink. I swear I got so tired of reading Mac’s ramblings about nail polish, clothes, shoes and whatever else came into her empty head: ("I’m big on drinking lots of water. Hydrating one’s skin from the inside out is even more important than using a good moisturizer on the surface.") But what was so frustrating about her was that she never knew what was going on and, because she didn’t know, the reader didn’t know, either. Mac was always in way over her head without a clue as to the kind of danger she was in, and she kept making the same mistakes over and over again—more concerned about her outfit and make-up than how she was going to stay alive. Not to mention the fact that she couldn’t see things that were right in front of her. Halfway through the book and she was still trying to deny what she was and it was irritating, especially when proof kept starting her right in the face. All she really did was follow around Jericho, blindly doing whatever he told her to do.

As for Jericho, he was supposed to be a shady, mysterious, character that’s always “in the know” with the dark side of things, such as criminals and whatnot. He was written as an Alpha male but he just came off as a jerk to me and a pretty bland one, too.

Besides the TSTL heroine (and bland hero), my main problem with this book is that it’s so blatantly a series setup; the plot never really gets off the ground and by the end, hardly anything has been resolved. The majority of the plot threads are just left hanging for the next book. I don’t mind if a book is a series starter or apart of a series—if you want to carry some subplots over for the next book, fine—but at least give me a solid story with some real resolution to the main plot by the time I finish the book. I felt like this book was just an intro book without any real substance. Anyone who brought this book in hardcover (raises hand) got ripped off.

In truth, I think Moning’s writing just isn’t for me. I tried one of her Highlander books before and found it mediocre at best, but I decided to try this one anyway because I heard she was doing something different with this series—not so much romance as paranormal suspense coupled with Fae. Also, I didn’t think it’d be fair to judge Moning’s entire works based on one book, but again, I was left wanting.

Final Word:

I found Darkfever’s plot boring; the heroine TSTL, the creatures unimaginative and Jericho a dull, jerk.