DemonessTenebrae

"He looked at me and I shivered. I never get enough of him. Never will.
He lives.
I breathe.
I want. Him. Always.
Fire to my ice. Ice to my fever."

Plot:

First 200 pages = the same as the fourth book, I'm gonna pull my hair out, can't stand the bitch of a heroine and her world without any freakin' logic...
The rest 312 pages = finally some sense and conclusion, some resolve in this series

MacKayla and Ryodan have killed Barrons. Mind-blowing grief has enveloped Mac. Is he really truly gone? How could he have just disappear from this world? From Mac? She finally gets it. How much this man meant to her. How much she loved him. And how wrong was she about him and his secrets.

After some grieving time she decides to survive. In a really interesting way. She teams up with the man who had her raped. Yes, I'm talking about Darroc. She teams up with the devil himself. And on top of it all, she repeatedly kisses him and grinds all over him him. Why you might ask yourselves? Well... long story short... she feels that to be her punishment, that she must imagine Barrons in him because that will somehow make sense to us readers, I suppose. She plans on using this centuries-old-man to trick him on finding the book so she can use it first and recreate the world. Right, that seems really totally plausible. A perfect plan.

Anyway, she stays with him for a while and decides to sleep with him. Because why the hell not, right. To get what she wants because she believes herself to be a seductress. Thankfully, before that comes to pass, Barrons shows up (of course no one believed he was really dead) and saves her (AGAIN!) even though she killed him. One might imagine she would understand why the man was so upset. I mean, she did kill him and barely three days later she is putting her tongue in her enemies mouth behind Barrons' bookstore. And of course Mac thinks he has no reason to be upset and like a little child decides to withhold the information from Barrons that she did not in fact fucked Darroc.

The sexual tension is all time sky high between Barrons and Mac. They fight, they seduce but they finish the deal only towards the ending of the book. The chase for the Book is on the way, Barrons and Mac are like cats over a hot stove, Barrons' men are after Mac's life, Darroc is dead, Dani hides a terrible secret, the Scots are helping with the druid chanting, Christian is morphing into something completely different, the sidhe-seers are split into fractions and Rowena is the puppeteer / a murderer. Oh, and let's not forget the mysterious V'lane who is not who he seemed to be. He has been lying for centuries. They will all fight amongst themselves but they will hunt for the Book together. Every single one of them for their own special reason.

Review:

It is difficult to start with MacKayla because I consider her to be one the stupidest, egocentric, selfish, blind and plain a rainbow in a petunia main female character that I've read about in years. And I usually read this genre on a daily basis.

In this book, she starts with her usual behavior. She has no faith or trust in Barrons. She believes he needs to draw and explain everything down to her. She doesn't even try to truly see him for his actions and into his soul. For example, in the previous book she accused him of raping her the same way the Unseelie Princes did. In this book, however, she admits she wasn't Pri-ya all the time. Towards the end she pretended to be mindless just so she could continue having sex with him. Duplicitous much? Anyhow, at the beginning of the Shadowfever she blames Barrons again, and get that, for not getting up after she killed him. For not getting up for her and protecting her again...

"...But he didn’t get up, the bastard. He stayed down.
With my spear in his back. How am I supposed to find my way each day without him here to help me? I don’t know what to do, how to make decisions.
I can’t survive this grief! I stumble and go down on one knee. I clutch my head.“

It took every ounce of strength in my body to continue with the reading. Because after this little fiasco, she continuously kisses Darroc and plans to sleep with him. It was almost too much. If this wasn't the final book, I probably would not have continued on. It infuriated me. Mac is completely clueless about what love really is and how to be faithful to someone. She also repeatedly leaves with V'lane to get some tan -.- . I don't know whether to admire Barrons or think him blindly in love or stupid to put up with her.

"Ah, I see. You thought it meant something that I died for you. Did you dress it up in romance? Compose sonnets memorializing my great sacrifice? Did it make you like me better? Did I have to be dead to get you to see me? Wake the fuck up, Ms. Lane. Dying is overrated. Human sentimentality has twisted it into the ultimate act of love. Biggest load of bullshit in the world. Dying for someone isn’t the hard thing. The man that dies escapes. Plain and simple. Game over. End of pain. Alina was the lucky one. Try living for someone. Through it all—good, bad, thick, thin, joy, suffering. That’s the hard thing."

Barrons. Forever and always the best character of the series. Without any doubts. If Mac was a better heroine, I would put them on a pedestal as the best couple of paranormal romance along with Zsadist and Bella and Cat and Bones. But she wasn't. She is his only downside and his only liability. When he returns from the dead, he even becomes more eloquent. And beastly. And even more HOT, if that's somehow humanly possible.

"Then I begin to feel her.
She is alive. She still wears my mark.
But what I sense is incongruent with her situation. I expect grief. The woman killed me and, in humans, familiarity breeds a certain emotional bond.
But lust? On the heels of murdering me, who does she lust for?
I entertain myself with thoughts of searing my brand from her skull.
When I finally arrive at the bookstore, what do I see in the alley behind it?
The woman that summoned me to save her, then stabbed me in the back at the first opportunity, isn’t lost in the Silvers, in need of saving.
She’s standing in my alley, kissing the bastard that had her raped and turned her Pri-ya.
No, let us be perfectly precise: She’s grinding herself against him and shoving her tongue halfway down his throat.
My monster rattles its cage.
Violently..."

That is one of the sexiest, searing, passionate responses from Barrons that got to me and ignited me like a paper set on fire. It contains it all. The passionate love for the undeserving woman, how her betrayal got to him, the fury & promised violence set in his scarce words. Mmmmmmm..... delicious !!!

"After a while, he pulls me around and kisses me. “You’re Mac,” he says. “And I’m Jericho. And nothing else matters. Never will. You exist in a place that is beyond all rules for me. Do you understand that?”
I do.
Jericho Barrons just told me he loves me."

For the storyline. A lot of twists and turns. Unexpected events. A lot of people revealing their true self that was somewhat shocking but it finally sets things straight.
A few remarks that bothered me.

The series ended. And I know about Barrons as much one would know after one honest conversation. I know he has a monster within him and that he cannot die but what exactly is this monster, this curse that only envelops him and his eight friends... it has no name, I don't even know why just them... I don't know what Barrons eats... I don't know how old is he... I don't know what percentage of animal is he after all this time... who is the mother. How did he get a son and something more about the boy. If only the boy was mentioned earlier or something so I could feel Barrons' pain over him. But it remains plain. The background is very poorly set. Few clues here and there but nothing major. Barrons remains a mystery. And it will forever stay like this.

Mac and her many plausible backgrounds. Is she a sidhe-seer? Or the concubine? Or Fae? Or the Unseelie King? Or the Book? Was she even born or made... Too much of this. This speculations own this book. She contemplates possibilities every other page and her long-lasting monologues almost put me to sleep, permanently. And when she finally learns what /who she is, it isn't really explained in a lot of detail. I mean, she was born to Isla who was apparently alive when the Book escaped but Barrons claimed he was at Isla's funeral five days after the escape. So... if she faked her own death and had a child afterwards, how did she die? Were sidhe-seers really made by the Unseelie King himself (are they completely human then?)?

Aye, there was the fourth rapist. That's all I'm saying folks about this matter.

Dani is as FECKING ANNOYING AS FECKING EVER ! Her way of talking and her over-sexual behavior make my nerves act up. :

"’S been quiet, way too quiet, and that creeps the feck outta me. Only other time things got this quiet … yeah, well—dude—the past ain’t me.
What’s already happened is for has-beens.
I’m all about the future. Tomorrow’s my day.
Today sure as feck ain’t."