The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

Book:  The Iron King

Author:  Julie Kagawa

Publisher:  Harlequin Teen

Year:  2010

My grade:  B+

Meghan Chase has a secret destiny; one she could never have imagined.
Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan's life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school or at home. 

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she's known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth - that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she'll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face; and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

My Review

I keep hearing so much about this series, so when my YA lit professor assigned us to read 2 books from a series, I figured I’d give this one a go.

I really, really liked this book.  I was hoping I would love it, but I didn’t.  Still, it was a good read and there are parts that I do love.

The story seemed to take off from the very beginning and I really liked that.  I have to read a lot of books this summer, so I can’t really take lots of time for a slow-starting novel.  This novel just dove right in and started with the action and that was really nice.

I loved, loved, loved Robin Goodfellow.  Yes, the Robin Goodfellow.  I don’t want to say too much more than that because I don’t want to spoil it, but his character is great!  He’s fun, mischievous, snarky and wonderful.  Plus, he’s red-headed.  And I have a soft spot for gingers.

I really enjoyed the way this author played with fairy folklore.  Of course, she has the Seelie and Unseelie courts and in addition to Puck, we get to see Queen Mab, Queen Titania and King Oberon.  But then she takes the rest of fairy lore and turns it completely on its head.  Again, I don’t want to spoil for anyone, but it was very interesting to see how she played with the mythology.

The other thing that I liked a lot was her description.  She uses such vivid description that it is very easy to picture everything in the world, yet she doesn’t spend 4 pages describing a group of trees. 

There were parts of the story that seemed to evoke Alice in Wonderland.  There are some references to falling down the rabbit hole and then there is Grim, the cait sithe , who seems to be rather like the Cheshire cat.  He’s another character that I just loved!

Now, many people seem to be totally in love with Prince Ash and I can see his attractiveness, but he didn’t seem to be that great to me.  Honestly, I liked most of the other characters better.  He is like the silent, brooding bad boy, but he seemed to lack depth.  I’m not sold on him.  At all.

I think that people who like to read books about faerie/fey and other paranormal books will like this series.  If it’s a reader who is just beginning to read paranormal, this is not the best book series to draw them in.  You need to be a little familiar with fairy lore in order to understand and appreciate much of this book.

On a side note, I HATE the cover!  The girl looks like she’s sporting a bad chick mullet from the 80’s.  Seriously?  They couldn’t do any better than that?  Where’s a beautiful cover like so many other YA books? 

My grade for this book is a B+.  I thought it was well-paced, very descriptive and a good adventure story.