Member Review
Review by
Cheyenne H, Reviewer
Kingdom of Shadow and Light finishes Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series, tying up the overarching conflicts: Cruce’s machinations, the Fae vs. human conflict, who inherits the Unseelie King’s power, and just how much the world has changed because of the Song of Making. This volume primarily follows Mac again, but chapter perspectives are spread across both familiar and new characters. Dani returns with a couple of chapters from her perspective, and Christian and Kat have more of their own. Two new characters are given focus: Lyryka, a faerie who’s spent her life in a bottle, and Ixcythe, princess of the winter court. Much of the book is focused on Mackayla—Mac for short—with lesser degrees spread between Christian, Kat, Ixcythe, and Lyryka. Dani’s presence is scant, her plotline brief and relevant only to who the successor of the Unseelie King is.
Moning shows Mac with her power as the Seelie Queen, wrestling with the fact that she has a foot in both Faerie and human worlds. This struggle is emphasized when she recognizes that she will no longer age, while her parents have grown visibly older in her absence, and her father is kidnapped while the fae contest Mac’s rule. Despite this, the courts are her responsibility and the other royal faeries contest Mac’s right to rule despite her inheriting the previous Seelie Queen’s power.
Kat’s storyline was initially satisfying in her motherhood and relationship with her daughter, Rae, along with her continued devotion to Sean despite years having passed under strain due to Sean’s powers as an Unseelie prince, though much of Kat’s storyline is ended early, later functioning as a deus-ex-machina for Mac.
Lyryka feels thrown in both as an additional reason to dislike Cruce and to supply Christian with a love interest so each major character ends with a relationship. However, she is still a likeable character and has been a long-needed example of a fae without the characteristic guile and manipulation other fae have exhibited in Moning’s series. Her introduction at the series’ end still leaves her less developed.
Similarly, Ixcythe has little development despite being a new and fascinating character not previously focused on. She’s the fae princess of the winter court, helping showcase a facet of fae royalty not previously touched on. The courts within Seelie and Unseelie hadn’t previously been discussed or expanded upon, only for Moning to implement the standard seasonal courts frequently used in faerie stories at the end of the series, but has the benefit of being a perspective character being antagonistic to Mac without being as high risk as Cruce is and would be just as deserving as Lyryka to have more of a story—though perhaps not spread so thinly through a book with six perspective characters.
Kingdom of Shadow and Light didn’t feel like the end of a book series, but a transition point. It didn’t carry the weight and tension earlier books did, especially the power behind Dreamfever and Shadowfever. There were many stories to tell still, with four of the six perspective characters having been long-standing members of the series whose plots deserved more time to flesh out on the page and to raise tensions. Even so, I don’t regret reading it, even if the series has lost some of the driving tension in its plots.
Moning shows Mac with her power as the Seelie Queen, wrestling with the fact that she has a foot in both Faerie and human worlds. This struggle is emphasized when she recognizes that she will no longer age, while her parents have grown visibly older in her absence, and her father is kidnapped while the fae contest Mac’s rule. Despite this, the courts are her responsibility and the other royal faeries contest Mac’s right to rule despite her inheriting the previous Seelie Queen’s power.
Kat’s storyline was initially satisfying in her motherhood and relationship with her daughter, Rae, along with her continued devotion to Sean despite years having passed under strain due to Sean’s powers as an Unseelie prince, though much of Kat’s storyline is ended early, later functioning as a deus-ex-machina for Mac.
Lyryka feels thrown in both as an additional reason to dislike Cruce and to supply Christian with a love interest so each major character ends with a relationship. However, she is still a likeable character and has been a long-needed example of a fae without the characteristic guile and manipulation other fae have exhibited in Moning’s series. Her introduction at the series’ end still leaves her less developed.
Similarly, Ixcythe has little development despite being a new and fascinating character not previously focused on. She’s the fae princess of the winter court, helping showcase a facet of fae royalty not previously touched on. The courts within Seelie and Unseelie hadn’t previously been discussed or expanded upon, only for Moning to implement the standard seasonal courts frequently used in faerie stories at the end of the series, but has the benefit of being a perspective character being antagonistic to Mac without being as high risk as Cruce is and would be just as deserving as Lyryka to have more of a story—though perhaps not spread so thinly through a book with six perspective characters.
Kingdom of Shadow and Light didn’t feel like the end of a book series, but a transition point. It didn’t carry the weight and tension earlier books did, especially the power behind Dreamfever and Shadowfever. There were many stories to tell still, with four of the six perspective characters having been long-standing members of the series whose plots deserved more time to flesh out on the page and to raise tensions. Even so, I don’t regret reading it, even if the series has lost some of the driving tension in its plots.
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