{"id":4137,"date":"2015-05-06T08:00:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-06T13:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=4137"},"modified":"2015-05-06T08:28:54","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T13:28:54","slug":"book-review-burned-by-karen-marie-moning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/?p=4137","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Burned by Karen Marie Moning"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BurnedI LOVED the Fever Series (Books 1-5). I’ve read it three times.\u00a0<\/span>

But the magic is gone. Mac is gone, though she was here.\u00a0<\/span>

First of all, there are serious continuity errors in this book. I felt like the author was trying to pull a fast one on us.\u00a0<\/strong>

1. The prologue shows a scene from book one that I know well, except this time it’s from Barrons point of view. According to his account he did a mind wipe on Mac after their second meeting so she wouldn’t know she’d had sex with him — something I absolutely don’t believe. A convenient mind wipe doesn’t change the fact that Mac 1.0 wouldn’t have done it with Barrons. It was out of character. It wasn’t just that she wasn’t “ready” (the apparent reason he wiped her mind — also something I don’t believe because it’s out of character for Barrons. “Deal with it, Rainbow GIrl.”) it was that however much she was grieving for her sister, she hadn’t reached that dark place.\u00a0<\/span>

One of the things I liked most about the first five books was Mac’s gradual slide into darkness. It’s a series that I use as an example of well-done character growth and change. The sexual tension between Mac and Barrons in book one was so thin I wasn’t entirely sure the author planned to go there at first, but that was okay, because Mac 1.0 wasn’t right for Barrons (and vica versa).\u00a0<\/span>

I also want to point out that there were no clues in the first book to suggest this turn of events.\u00a0<\/span>

2. Danni’s little problem came out of nowhere. It was unsupported, unnecessary, and kind of lame.\u00a0<\/span>

3. I don’t remember the bookstore changing rooms and stories in the original books. I might reread them at some point to make sure I’m right on this one, but it seems like if that were true, Mac 1.0 would have made a big deal about it in the very first book.\u00a0<\/span>

Second, there were point of view problems in this book.<\/strong>

Thi was initially a standard first person series. Eventually, Danni took on a big enough role (and Mac was unable to weigh in) that she got some chapters. I was okay with that. But now we have point of view chapters from Mac, Barrons, Lore, Danni, Jada, Kat, and Christian. Talk about your POV explosion!\u00a0<\/span>

First person does not handle multiple points of view well. I think this story got away from the author a bit, switching from being mostly about Mac to being about the need for a world to heal. As an author myself, I understand that difficulty. But there was yet another problem with the POV, beyond the multiple firsts: Present tense.\u00a0<\/span>

Mac tells the story as if it is happening to her right now. This creates a dreamlike quality to the story. It killed Mac’s attitude and voice, which were key factors in making me fall in love with her in the first place. It also took away Mac’s power to foreshadow.This hurt the tension level of the book and at times it felt boring to me. I didn’t read it as quickly as I normally would have.\u00a0<\/span>

Basically, the story-telling style in this book was completely different, and I didn’t like it.\u00a0<\/strong>

So, was there anything good about it?\u00a0<\/strong>

I do hope that the mystery of Barrons and the nine is solved in these new books. I like some of the new characters who are stepping up and getting their own points of view, and I’m curious about them.\u00a0<\/span>

But honestly, very little happened in this book. It was boring. It barely wet my appetite for the new arc it seems to be presenting.\u00a0<\/span>

Though I’ve tried, no words can express my disappointment in this new installment.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I LOVED the Fever Series (Books 1-5). I’ve read it three times.\u00a0But the magic is gone. Mac is gone, though she was here.\u00a0First of all, there are serious continuity errors in this book. I felt like the author was trying to pull a fast one on us.\u00a01. The prologue shows a scene from book one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,57],"tags":[631,634,314,633,143,632,630,18],"class_list":["post-4137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-what-im-reading","category-fantasy-what-im-reading","tag-burned","tag-critical","tag-dark-fantasy","tag-fae","tag-karen-marie-moning","tag-mac","tag-moning","tag-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4137"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4144,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4137\/revisions\/4144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christineamsden.com\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}