Helpful Score: 4
I've read a LOT of fae-themed YA lit in the last year or so (after all the vampire stories fell off my to-read list), so I don't say this lightly: The Iron Fae one of the best series in the crowded sea of "fairy tales" crowding Borders today. In my opinion, author Julie Kagawa has gotten the formula just right. The Iron King, her first book in a planned four-book series, combines the dark cruelty of Melissa Marr's Wicked Lovely books (one of the trailblazers of the genre) with the best-loved faeries in literature, plucked from Shakespeare, folklore and classic bedtime stories.
From the earliest pages of the book, it's clear that heroine Meghan Chase is special. But still, she doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. She's friendly but forgettable. Bright, but socially awkward, and close only with her neighbor and childhood friend, Robbie. Her father disappeared mysteriously in a city park when she was very young, and although Meghan is still haunted by his absence and the strangeness of his vanishing, her mother has moved on with Meghan's hog-farmer step-father and four-year-old half-brother. Meghan now floats through her day-in-day-out existence, disconnected from it all.
Unfortunately, the sameness and safety of Meghan's life is shattered on her 16th birthday, when her little brother is snatched from her home by a "dark man" from his closet. In his place is a changeling, a rude, base creature that looks like her brother, but is a vicious, empty double ready to cause chaos and misfortune in any way he can.
After rescuing Meghan from an attack by the changeling, Robbie reveals his true identity: he's actually Robin Goodfellow, Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream and a powerful Summer Court faerie. Meghan is more different than she ever knew -- she is part faerie, daughter of King Oberon and a lost princess of the Summer Court. Together, they journey to the strange world of the Nevernever to reunite Meghan with her birth father and hopefully, to rescue her brother and bring him home again.
The journey to Nevernever is a dark one -- this is a book most appropriate for older teens. Kagawa's fae are bloodthirsty and cunning, and in her time in Faerieland, Meghan is viciously assaulted by Redcaps, almost raped by a band of satyrs and is in constant threat of being eaten by various beasties. But with the help of cait-sith Grimalkin (a nod to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat), Puck and his sworn enemy Ash, youngest son of Queen Mab and prince of the Winter Court, Meghan stumbles upon a much larger threat than these various nightmares. Something is killing the Nevernever, poisoning the magical land like toxic waste and leaving it scarred, burned and colorless. A strange, unknown fae who calls himself The Iron King claims to have her brother, and has unleashed a host of never-before-seen machine/faerie hybrids on the land. Iron is fatal to fae -- so how can such a thing exist?
As Meghan unravels the mystery of the Iron fae -- and her own faerie history -- she'll also fight royal fae politics, millenia-old blood grudges and the traditions of her magical birthright to find happiness and to carve out a place for herself in her new world.
I loved Kagawa's writing, and couldn't put this book down. I loved the pairing of traditional fae legend with a new, modern mythology, and the iron fae concept is a very original one. I loved the way Kagawa brought technology into the world of magic, creating a classic conflict very resonant to our world today. Does technology have the power to kill magic? It's an interesting social commentary wrapped up in a wonderful, imaginative story that I can't wait to continue in The Iron Daughter.
From the earliest pages of the book, it's clear that heroine Meghan Chase is special. But still, she doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. She's friendly but forgettable. Bright, but socially awkward, and close only with her neighbor and childhood friend, Robbie. Her father disappeared mysteriously in a city park when she was very young, and although Meghan is still haunted by his absence and the strangeness of his vanishing, her mother has moved on with Meghan's hog-farmer step-father and four-year-old half-brother. Meghan now floats through her day-in-day-out existence, disconnected from it all.
Unfortunately, the sameness and safety of Meghan's life is shattered on her 16th birthday, when her little brother is snatched from her home by a "dark man" from his closet. In his place is a changeling, a rude, base creature that looks like her brother, but is a vicious, empty double ready to cause chaos and misfortune in any way he can.
After rescuing Meghan from an attack by the changeling, Robbie reveals his true identity: he's actually Robin Goodfellow, Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream and a powerful Summer Court faerie. Meghan is more different than she ever knew -- she is part faerie, daughter of King Oberon and a lost princess of the Summer Court. Together, they journey to the strange world of the Nevernever to reunite Meghan with her birth father and hopefully, to rescue her brother and bring him home again.
The journey to Nevernever is a dark one -- this is a book most appropriate for older teens. Kagawa's fae are bloodthirsty and cunning, and in her time in Faerieland, Meghan is viciously assaulted by Redcaps, almost raped by a band of satyrs and is in constant threat of being eaten by various beasties. But with the help of cait-sith Grimalkin (a nod to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat), Puck and his sworn enemy Ash, youngest son of Queen Mab and prince of the Winter Court, Meghan stumbles upon a much larger threat than these various nightmares. Something is killing the Nevernever, poisoning the magical land like toxic waste and leaving it scarred, burned and colorless. A strange, unknown fae who calls himself The Iron King claims to have her brother, and has unleashed a host of never-before-seen machine/faerie hybrids on the land. Iron is fatal to fae -- so how can such a thing exist?
As Meghan unravels the mystery of the Iron fae -- and her own faerie history -- she'll also fight royal fae politics, millenia-old blood grudges and the traditions of her magical birthright to find happiness and to carve out a place for herself in her new world.
I loved Kagawa's writing, and couldn't put this book down. I loved the pairing of traditional fae legend with a new, modern mythology, and the iron fae concept is a very original one. I loved the way Kagawa brought technology into the world of magic, creating a classic conflict very resonant to our world today. Does technology have the power to kill magic? It's an interesting social commentary wrapped up in a wonderful, imaginative story that I can't wait to continue in The Iron Daughter.
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