Iron King (Iron Fey, #1)

by Julie Kagawa

[Briana @ Pages Unbound]

I have noticed that lately the reviews I am writing approach the book in a chronological order: I felt this way about the beginning, this way about the middle, and this way about the end. This is an approach that English professors tend not to like. In some way, it can over-simplify things. But I find it a useful approach for some reviews, where I want my readers to understand my progression of emotions towards the book, just in case someone else has the same journey. A book that seems mediocre in the beginning can become good later on, and it would be a shame for someone who might ultimately enjoy it to DNF it in the opening chapters. The Iron King is one such book.

There is little I like about the beginning at all. The writing here is unremarkable and the story bordering on stereotypical. Meg is an under-appreciated teen with an attitude, whom for some reason I am supposed to adore in spite of (because of?) her grating personality. However, the fact that her stepfather—and essentially everyone else—literally forgets her existence is too overstated to excite my sympathy. And I can never side with the “normal” kids who need to throw lame insults at the “popular” ones in order to bolster their own confidence. Calling a girl “inflate-a-boob Angie” is not witty; it is mean and makes Meg no better than the shallow students she is supposedly setting herself against.

I almost set The Iron King down here because it dawned on me that both the story and the style sounded like something I could find on FictionPress. It was not particularly good, and I had only believed it was as good as I had because I knew it was a bestseller, that everyone loves it, and that I was supposed to believe it was good. I had a sudden revelation that, really, it was not.

This opinion lasted about to the time Meg enters Nevernever.

Here, the stereotypes begin to float away. Kagawa even explains why people always forget Meg in a way that mostly soothed my ruffled feathers. My only interpretation is that Kagawa writes fantasy better than she writes contemporary fiction.

I still have the problem that I did while reading The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long; I have not read Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and I am unfamiliar with all the folklore this story is based on. Nonetheless, to my uneducated senses, Kagawa seems to utilize her source material well, creating a fairy world that is equal parts beauty and danger, though the danger in Long’s interpretation seems greater. Kagawa’s best creation, however, is the iron fey themselves, who come as a fantastic and timely surprise. She does run the risk of overdoing them, but their invention is spot-on.

Ultimately, however, The Iron King is a romance, a fairly sexy one, in fact. And, ultimately, it is really cute. Meg and Ash do not really know each other, and the love triangle that is coming in book two can be smelled a mile away, but these are issues that can be easily resolved before the end of the series. For now, readers can just have fun watching the tension and attraction. I have to assume this is the primary draw of the story, since the plot is a fairly generic travelling quest.

The Iron Kingis solid, romantic, and fun. It has several elements I thought were fantastic. After all the hype, however, I found it a bit overrated. I recommend it for readers looking for a light, fun romance. Personally, I think I will pursue the rest of the series, but not as a priority.

This review was also posted at Pages Unbound Book Reviews.