Saturday 11 July 2015

Book Review: The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

Read: July 2 - 3      Verdict: 3 Stars


The Iron Kings centres around Meghan Chase, a recently-turned sixteen-year-old girl. Meghan lives with her mom, stepdad and half-brother in a rundown farm and she has one of those problems that people never seem to notice her.

One day, a lot of strange things happen to Meghan and when she gets home, her brother is not himself. Meghan's best friend Robbie tells her that the person pretending to be her brother is a changeling and in order to rescue her real sibling, they must travel to Fairyland. Meghan, it turns out, is the daughter of one of the Fey Kings and Robbie is not Robbie but Robin Goodfellow aka Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Not only does Meghan have to deal with the fact that her real father is a King of the Summer court, and her stepmom wants to kill her, or turn her into something unnatural, but she also still has to find her brother. With the help of Robin, and the dark prince Ash, who may or may not want to kill her, Meghan need to find the 'Iron Court' which no-one knew even existed.

The detail in this book was extraordinary. Fairyland, despite its inviting name, is not somewhere I would like to go...ever. It's basically the epitome of every bad story about faeries, these are not TinkerBell-esque pixies but drowning waterhorses, human-eating goblins and satyrs who would gladly rape a young girl walking alone in a blink of an eye.

I recently read American Gods by Neil Gaiman and the Iron Court reminded me of some of the concepts in his book as well. The new court was created with people's new obsession with technology. Real magic was weakening while iron and technology grew stronger and threatened to overcome the other fey realms. I think this is a great concept to explore, especially with the age we're living in now.

Overall, this is a great take on a gothic, creepy look at fairies and the world of magic. This book lost a star because of how annoying Meghan was for me. I didn't feel an overly strong connection to any character, Meghan or her love interests Robin and Ash. I think I will go on and read the rest of the trilogy and I'm hoping I will feel closer to the characters as they go through some more trials and I can root for them to come out on top.

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