35 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A dark, satisfying twist on faery lore, February 16, 2010
This review is from: The Iron King (Harlequin Teen) (Paperback)
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William Shakespeare's faeries from A Midsummer's Night Dream have been popular characters for YA fiction of late. Following Lesley Livingston's Wondrous Strange and Darklight, The Iron King marks the third book to borrow Puck, Summer King Oberon and Queen Titiana and Winter Queen Mab. Both series also imagine a daughter for King Oberon who discovers her faery heritage and is drawn from the human world into the world of the fey. But that is where the similarities end. The Iron King is a much darker tale.
image On the eve of her sixteenth birthday, Meghan Chase is confronted with a scene straight out of Pet Cemetery when she and her mother are attacked by her four year old brother. Her best friend Robbie (aka the famous Puck) saves her and reveals that her brother has been switched with a faery changeling and the only way to get him back is to find the kidnapper in the Nevernever (aka faeryland).
The world of the faery is as terrifying as it is beautiful. In her quest, Meghan is nearly eaten several times, ripped apart by trolls, drowned by nixies, impaled by a prince, raped by a herd of satyrs, and boiled by Goblins. And that's not even half of it. There is nothing sweet and gentle about the fey in this book.
There are a number of amusing characters who aid/impede Meghan along the way, most notably the cait sith Grimilkin (who is straight out of Alice in Wonderland), and the inevitable love interest Ash, youngest son of the Winter Queen and sworn enemy of Puck. The animosity between Puck and Ash along with each one's motivation for helping Meghan was a constant thread of entertainment.
Meghan does a fairly good job of acclimating to the revelations Puck presents her with. She struggles initially with the idea that faeries are real, but she doesn't blindly cling to her former reality either. She adapts and learns, and rarely makes the same mistake twice. Nor does she allow herself to become distracted from saving her brother. I did find some of her dialogue to be somewhat juvenile and her interest in Ash seemed to have little motivation beyond how 'inhumanly beautiful' he was.
I think what I enjoyed the most about The Iron King was the twist on the traditional fey mythology involving iron. I don't want to give anything away so I won't elaborate, but be ready to start counting down the months until August when The Iron Daughter is released as there is a bit of a cliffhanger ending. In the meantime I have a sudden nostalgic desire to watch Labyrinth.
Sexual Content: (YA books receive a more thorough breakdown) Kissing
My Rating: 3 out of 5
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19 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I don't understand why everyone thinks this book is so great., November 20, 2010
This review is from: The Iron King (Harlequin Teen) (Paperback)
Okay, first off I didn't hate this book... it's not the worst book ever, I just didn't think it was very good. I really wanted to like it, I really did. I saw that it had 4 1/2 stars and I was intrigued by the back cover (I love things with fairies) but as I sat down to read it I was sorely disappointed (maybe because I had really high hopes).
So here is the basic premise: There's a girl, Meghan Chase, and her life kind of sucks. She's poor, her mom and stepdad overlook her, and she only has one friend at school. The book starts on the eve of Meghan's 16th birthday and we are led to believe that something significant is going to happen to her... I actually really liked the way that this was set up. The beginning of the book was good. It built up a nice amount of mystery. Some strange things happen to Meghan at school and then at home and it made me start to feel a little sympathy for Meghan. I liked her one friend -prankster Robbie- and her little brother Ethan, who is super cute and very sweet, even though he's a little spoiled. But I liked him, so when he is kidnapped by fairies and replaced with an evil fairy child, forcing Meghan to go into the world of Fairie to rescue him I was intrigued. Unfortunately this is where the story starts getting worse instead of better.
First we find out that Meghan's best, and only friend, Robbie is really a fairy named Puck (from midsummer night's dream), which bugged me! I was hoping for an original character. But I will give the author this... she did a good job writing puck.. he was probably one of the more interesting characters. Unfortunately I cannot say as much for the books heroine, Meghan. She bugged the crap out of me! Some other reviewers have referred to her as strong, which is true, but she is also selfish and disrespectful, rash and rarely listens to other people. It also bugged me that after finding out that her brother was taken she never asks Robbie/Puck why. She doesn't say "hey why would fairies want my brother?" She's just like lets go get him. And basically I just found her unsympathetic.... but that wasn't even my main problem with the book.
My biggest disappointment with this book was that I thought it was going to be much more of a love story, but the love story doesn't have much of a role until about 200 pages into the book and up until this point she spends much of her time roaming around with a TALKING CAT. And, although I actually liked this cat character, when your expecting a love story and instead you get an obnoxious girl running around with a talking cat, it's kind of disappointing. But I will say this, when the love story part finally did come into play I was interested... I'm a sucker for a handsome 'evil' prince. Unfortunately I can't say it was a great love story. It was a little on the flat side. There were a couple of good lines -some of which are at printed in the book before the start- but other than that it was only so so. I am sure that there will be other's who will really like it, but I just found it a little unoriginal.
My other problem was that I felt as if the author tried to cram way too much stuff into this story. The author did have awesome detailed descriptions, but because so many events happened in this book I felt as if half of the words used in this story were used to describe scenery, because Meghan was constantly moving around. She was in the real world, then she was in Fairie, then she was in the Seelie court, then she was back in the real world, then she was back in the Unseelie court... and it just kept going. And I can't even count how many times Meghan finds herself in a near death situation which she narrowly escapes -which for me made the book completely tensionless, which was too bad because it is obvious (from her many descriptions) that this author has a great imagination. I just wished she had taken out some of this books events and expanded on the others so that as a reader I could have felt more connected to the story. There wasn't that much build up to events, aside from the ending, stuff just happened, and it happened at once... and none of the villains were that threatening either. I think it was because in every scene there is a new bad guy, so each of these villains is on the one dimensional side.
So, sadly I can't really recommend this story, but I think I am in the minority with this.
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21 of 29 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Delicious, January 23, 2010
This review is from: The Iron King (Harlequin Teen) (Paperback)
Take Labyrinth, crash it full-speed into The Neverending Story, and mix well with The Matrix, and that's just a taste of the wildly imaginative ride you'll go on when you read THE IRON KING. It's such a pleasure to read a contemporary fantasy that's fresh and full of action, and doubly a pleasure to read the first of a series that stands completely on its own. This book is a fantastic voyage and a satisfying read, and now I'm heartbroken that I have to wait until next fall to get another bite. Highly recommended!
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