The Iron King by J. Kagawa

Iron KingThe first novel in Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey series, The Iron King, had a hint of Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, a pinch of Disney’s Peter Pan, a dash of Melissa Marr’s Wicked Lovely series, a splash of C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and a sprinkling of Jim Henson’s film The Labyrinth. It might seem like a odd mix, but with Kagawa’s own personal creativity, The Iron King is a wonderful coming of age novel that had me laughing, crying and hanging on the edge of my seat in trepidation.

Meghan Chase has a secret destiny—one she could never have imagined…

Something has always felt slightly off in Meghan’s life, ever since her father disappeared before her eyes when she was six. She has never quite fit in at school…or at home.

When a dark stranger begins watching her from afar, and her prankster best friend becomes strangely protective of her, Meghan senses that everything she’s known is about to change.

But she could never have guessed the truth—that she is the daughter of a mythical faery king and is a pawn in a deadly war. Now Meghan will learn just how far she’ll go to save someone she cares about, to stop a mysterious evil no faery creature dare face…and to find love with a young prince who might rather see her dead than let her touch his icy heart.

Determined to save her younger brother, Meghan Chase goes into the seductive faery land, Nevernever, undeterred by all of the dangers. That’s what I love most about her – the fact that Meghan cared more for her brother than her own safety. In most young adult novels, the main character only complains about her younger sibling(s).

Of course, once she was in Nevernever and Meghan learned that she was a faery princess (of the Summer Court) her priorities never changed. Her life had just turned upside down and inside out (finding out that the man she had always believed to be her father wasn’t really her biological father will do that to a girl’s life) and she was trying to come to terms with the fact that she wasn’t completely human but an illegitimate daughter of King Oberon. Yet, Meghan didn’t stop in her quest to rescue her younger half-brother Ethan.

Because she doesn’t know anything about Nevernever, she slowly accumulated a gangly group to help her along the way. Her best friend Puck, his archenemy Prince Ash (the youngest prince of the Winter Court) and Grimalkin, a talking cat. Puck is a care-free, fun-loving kind of guy completely opposite of Ash who is deadly serious almost all the time and hides his emotions behind a thick, frozen wall. He is the epitome of tall, dark and brooding.

The plot is fairly simple and easy to follow but exciting; peppered with fight scenes, creepy faeries that keep trying to steal Meghan and a vivid, seductive world. Because she is King Oberon’s daughter, faeries attempt to kidnap and/or murder her to use her in their plots of revenge against Oberon.

During their adventure, the tension between Ash and Meghan grows stronger, even though they’re supposed to be enemies (opposing Courts and all that). While I love Ash, I adore Puck, and once he realized that Meghan and Ash were attracted to each other, he got jealous and proved that he wanted more than just friendship with her.

Teenage drama, a strange new land, an epic adventure, hot male faeries – what’s not to love about The Iron King?

Read Order:
Winters Passage (novella)
The Iron King
The Iron Daughter
The Iron Queen

Also reviewed by: A Buckeye Girl Reads, Wordbird, Dreams and Speculation, Presenting Lenore and Fantastic Book Review

About Casey 203 Articles
Casey is the founder of Heart Full of Ink, Director at Reading Until Dawn Con, and a full time cheese addict. She's been ranting and reviewing for Literary Escapism since 2010, and is part of the trio #3Bloggers1Series podcast. When she's not reading, looking for new books, or stalking authors online (waiting for more books), she can be found binge watching Netflix. But really, her life is all about DEM BOOKS!

7 Comments

  1. I’ve read both books and the short story in this series and really enjoyed them. I’m looking foward to Iron Queen

  2. I’ve read both books and enjoyed them too. A really different take on the faeire world, and pretty good for a YA novel.

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