Review Detail

You know those books that should be terrible? The ones where just the concept is so ridiculous and awful that there’s really no way they should be able to redeem themselves. Except they DO work, for whatever reason, and in spite of yourself, you can’t help liking that book.

The Iron King is very much that sort of book. Outwardly, it has everything going against it. Teen girl finds out she’s a fairy (*gasp*) and her dad is the fairy king (*bigger gasp*) and she is actually the most special of all special fairies, and has the power to save all of fairyland (*biggest gasp*). Throw in a a bucketful of very obvious allusions to Ella Enchanted, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Romeo & Juliet, The Hobbit, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, The Labyrinth, and The Goonies, and we have a recipe for a certified failbook.

Basically, I do not like the premise for this story, which I knew before I opened the front cover. I picked this up because I was impressed with The Immortal Rules by Kagawa, and figured I should check out her more popular set of books. So, I wasn’t very surprised when The Iron King began methodically ticking off boxes in the Paranormal Cliché Checklist; I expected it.

Also, characters: not the best. Meghan needs to be rescued a lot. She also thinks she’s awesome because she’s poor and not “shallow” like rich girls who wear makeup. Because, obviously, wearing makeup means you’re an awful person. Duh. Yeah, it’s real great that she’s attempting to rescue her brother from the fey who kidnapped him, but I kind of feel like David Bowie already did that…pretty sure he did.

And nothing you can say will convince me that Grimalkin is in any way superior to Hoggle and the Bog of Eternal Stench. Nothing.

All this to say, even though this book is a complete rip-off of all sorts of other (very awesome) books and films, and even though Meghan is not a very inspiring protagonist, I still liked this book. In spots, I liked it a lot.

Julie Kagawa’s storytelling has some sort of indefinable quality to it that sort of rises above the cheesy, been-there-done-that-ness of her content. Something like mindless entertainment, with a little bit of guilty pleasure attached. But very enjoyable nontheless.

And, all things considered, we must remember that this is a YA paranormal debut. Personally, I cannot think of a good YA paranormal debut off the top of my head. So, the fact that this is basically a book version of The Labyrinth, minus David Bowie and plus corny Shakespeare references, is only to be expected. Altogether, there are much, much worse books out there.