Author; Julie Kagawa
Review; 4/5
Release Date; Febuary 1st 2010
Product Description from Goodreads
Meghan Chase has never fit in at her small-town high school, and now, on the eve of her 16th birthday, she discovers why. When her half brother is kidnapped, Meghan is drawn into a fantastical world she never imagined--the world of Faery, where anything you see may try to eat you, and Meghan is the daughter of the summer faery king. Now she will journey into the depths of Faery to face an unknown enemy . . . and beg the help of a winter prince who might as soon kill her as let her touch his icy heart. The Iron King is the first book in the Iron Fey series.
Review;
First of all I would just like to state that I had pretty high expectations for this book due to all the rave reviews on goodreads and fellow bloggers blogs, this book wasn’t bad by any means but it did however disappoint me because of the pedestal I placed it on before reading it.
When I first started reading this book I was very annoyed with the main character Meghan. I thought “oh great here’s another plain girl, who loves the beautiful jock at school, and complains that he parents don’t respect her, and can’t even remember her birthday”, I was so not into reading a book based on one big giant pity party. However it got much better before it got much worse.
One thing that did annoy me however was that I found a lot of the main characters and storylines seemed borrowed. This book had a lot of elements from; Alice in wonderland, Peter Pan, Midsummer’s Night Dream, The Chronicles of Narnia and various other popular fantasy novels. One of the main characters, I’ll call him Grim because I can’t remember the full form, was pretty much the Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.
However, around the 100-page mark things got interesting. The plot was JAMPACKED, and I mean that in the most literal sense of the word. I have never read a book where the main character has so many bad turns of luck as Meghan has, at times it was like “… come on can’t this girl get a break?”. I loved the characters though; Puck is a hoot and a half he adds so much comical relief to this book its insane, Ash literally embodies the dark glooming prince, and I even liked the Sellie King.
Julie does an amazing job of painting this world out for readers. It only took me like 20 hours to read this book I was so immersed in the world. I’m eagerly awaiting august for the second book!!
I hate feeling disappointed after you've heard so much about a book! At least you really enjoyed the characters though!
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry it took you so long to get into the book. I really liked it right from the beginning but I understand what you mean about having many similarities to other books and why it didn't stand out to you at first.
ReplyDeleteGreat review, Sarah! It's hard when books start slowly, but not everyone loves books the same way, you know? :)
ReplyDeleteWhat a helpful review! I notice when authors borrow characters too: on one hand, so much has been written over the years, is there anything that is truly "new"? But on the other hand, imitators are still imitators, ha!
ReplyDeleteI understand how hard it can be to come up with a truly original story, but on the other hand, we readers don't like to feel that we're reading the same story over and over again.
Very good point!
I'm glad you still liked it, though, and I can't wait to read it too!
Great review!! I wonder why the author imitated other characters so much. Thanks for visiting my blog!!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the honest review :)
ReplyDeleteAh, I actually really enjoyed Iron King and liked that I could see some influences, but again to each their own, and I do agree with you on the action at the end. :-)
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