Kagawa, The Iron King, Mira Books, 2010
ISBN: 978-0778304340
Julie Kagawa writes best when she is not borrowing from well-known fairy tales. As a result, the second half of The Iron King in which she explores a fairy world tainted by modern myths is somewhat more effective than the first half where I had the impression she was trying to glue together quotes from various sources to little effect and didn’t really have a feel for her story. The Puck character, for example, might have worked much better simply as Robin and she hadn’t directly revealed that he was the legendary figure Puck. She manages to handle the emerging love story better than she handles the relationship between the main female character, Meghan, and her brother, Ethan. The girl’s attachment for her brother is supposed to be the main driving force in the story and the motivation for Meghan’s exploits but I personally found it hard to believe. Most of the characters do not really take on a life of their own. Having said all that, once I got to the end of the story I did have a hankering to buy the next book to find out what happened so maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that!