Reviewed by Nessa Luna on
I bought this book over a year ago, because I thought the summary sounded interesting. Still it took me this long to actually start reading the book, and that may have been because of the little circle on the cover saying this book was 'The Next Twilight'. After reading the book I can honestly say that the sticker is wrong. This book felt more a bit like the next Mortal Instruments, in my opinion.
There was a girl, with an artistic mother, who turned out to be special. She had a bit of a nerdy best friend and she fell hopelessly in love with a douch-ey guy who kind of clashed with her best friend a bit. Her best friend did also turn out to have a bit of a crush on her. Also someone she loved very dearly got kidnapped by the bad people. Yeah, as I started to read more and more it just sounded more like City of Bones and though I really disliked CoB, I liked The Iron King a bit more. Not really sure why though, because with the entire love-triangle and the kind of insta-love Meghan experienced with Ash it wouldn't really have been the book for me.
I think it's because this book was a bit more scary and gory than TMI was, with some really (imo) disturbing descriptions of things (in a sexual way not a murderous way) being done to humans by the faeries. I also liked this better because they almost immediately went to the faery world, and I liked it when that happens in stories - because I've read a lot of stories like this happening in the human world already, I want to see more fictional worlds!
Still, there is one thing that I didn't like about that fictional world: no map. There was no map in this book and that is SUCH A SHAME! I want to know where all the courts are, where the places Meghan visited are, where all the trods are located; I want to know ALL OF IT!
And now for the characters; like I already said I kept on comparing Meghan to Clary from TMI a lot; she did some dumb things, she screamed almost every time she saw something scary, but in the end I started to like her a bit more (even though she still had the hots for Ash); her best friend who had like four different names in the first five chapters alone, was a bit like Simon (except that he was a 'creature' right from the start and didn't become one later on); I really liked Puck because he was just an awesome character (I don't know how to explain this without spoilering too much). Ash was DE-FI-NI-TE-LY like Jace. I disliked him right from the start, and of course disliked the romance between him and Meghan. To be fair, I started to like him a bit further in the book, but still not a lot.
Then there were some other characters, like Meghan's family (mother, stepfather and little brother Ethan); her real father, king of the Summer court who I imagined looked exactly like Thranduil from the Hobbit (I heard Lee Pace speaking every time he opened his mouth). The pack rats, which were just my favourites, and Grim. I love cats, and this cat (though sometimes a bit bitchy) was just really awesome. I know a lot of people don't like talking animals in movies or books and I honestly don't get that; I personally love it when animals talk (I would love for my cats to be able to talk, but then they'd probably be like 'gimme food' all day long).
I liked the story in general, apart from the whole love triangle thingy that I felt coming up. It was very well written, though sometimes the way things were described were a bit over the top in my opinion. But hey, that Nevernever world was probably a bit over the top sometimes.
In the end, I can say that I liked this book, even though the cover said 'The Next Twilight' and even though it felt like TMI; and I will probably read the other three books in this series as well.
My opinion on this book in one gif:
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 29 December, 2014: Finished reading
- 29 December, 2014: Reviewed