Book Review: The Iron King, by Julie Kagawa

Photo by Eamon Curry

Meghan Chase is not particularly excited about her sixteenth birthday. She doesn't expect her mother and stepfather to remember it, and she only has one friend at school, where she has never fitted in. But when she gets home, she finds her mother, bleeding and unconscious, and her brother Ethan is no longer the sweet, loving child that he has always been. She quickly learns that the child in the house is not Ethan at all but a faery changeling, and that she doesn't have much time to find Ethan and bring him home.

I had read a couple of reviews of Julie Kagawa's books before but only picked up The Iron King after I was given a copy at the MIRA Ink Blogger Party, where there was a live video call with Julie Kagawa. All the other bloggers there were thrilled and she came across as a really nice, friendly person so I knew I would have to read it before the year was out.

At first I found it a bit difficult to get into The Iron King. The story didn't immediately grab me the way that Holly Black's Modern Faerie Tale series did, and I found Meghan a little frustrating as she so easily accepted the meagre information that other characters gave to her about what she was getting herself into. I have the same problem with many books though - sometimes I find it unbelievable that a character wouldn't just refuse to get involved without all the information I would deem necessary. I made a similar comment in my review of Tithe.

However, about halfway through I was hooked. I love the idea of the Iron Fey, created when human's dreams shifted away from nature and towards science and technology. I also liked seeing how Meghan grew up and became a stronger person, and as the story that I think will be the centre of the series emerged, I felt myself settling in for the long haul!

I also really liked the contrast between the two love interests. Yes, there's a triangle, and ordinarily I'd be yawning at the merest whiff of one but I don't know which of the two guys I prefer yet! Also, it's really not that important to the story, at least not in The Iron King, and I hope it remains somewhat of a background detail and stays out of the major plot in the future books.

The characterisation was best for Puck and Ash, but they stand out from the rest of the fey with their morally ambigious natures. It's more difficult to figure them out than most of the other characters. I loved Grimalkin the best, however, and I hope he appears a lot in the other books. I can't tell what he wants, ultimately, but he is very funny and clever.

I am going to largely reserve my judgement until I have read the rest of the series, but I enjoyed The Iron King and would recommend that you give it a try if you've enjoyed other stories set in the world of the fey.

If you've already read amd loved The Iron King, some suggestions for you:

• Tithe, by Holly Black - another story about a faery changeling, but this time, the main character is the changeling

•  Ash, by Malinda Lo - a retelling of Cinderella in which she makes a deal with a powerful fairy, rather than being saved by a fairy godmother

Top Ten Tuesday: New to Me Authors of 2012

This is my thirteenth Top Ten Tuesday post, though technically it's Wednesday and I'm late again! Top Ten Tuesday was created and is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I'm quite pleased about this theme as it's great to think back to all the books I've read (so far!) this year. My list is in chronological order; it's not a ranked Top Ten.

 Photo by chefranden

Top Ten New To Me Authors I Read in 2012

 1. C. J. Daugherty - A debut author for 2012 with boarding-school mystery Night School. The sequel, Night School: Legacy is coming out in January and I am so excited!

2. Veronica Rossi - Another debut author (Under the Never Sky) with a sequel due in January - Through The Ever Night - that I am looking forward to enormously.

3. Eva Ibbotson - I wasn't expecting to love Journey to the River Sea as much as I did, as it's aimed at 9-12 year olds, but I was delighted by this new discovery and am looking forward to devouring all her other books.

4. Suzanne Collins - I finally read The Hunger Games! A book I first learnt about in 2009! I should have read it much sooner, but I'm glad I got around to it this year.

5. Sophie Flack - Yet another debut author - I'm looking forward to seeing what she does next, having liked Bunheads a lot.

6. Elaine Dundy - I really enjoyed the semi-autobiographical The Dud Avocado and am planning to read her other books soon.

7. Hannah Harrington - Again, Saving June was a debut that showed a lot of promise and I'm looking forward to reading Speechless, her second novel.

8. Rachel Vincent - An author with several series to her name, I started with My Soul to Take from the Soul Screamers series and have no plans to stop!

9. Malinda Lo - I'm really pleased that I read Ash this year and discovered another fairy tale reteller to obsess over!

10. Karen Russell - I'm currently reading St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, which is a book of short stories, and really enjoying it. All the protagonists/narrators are adolescents whose worlds are in some way a little magical. For example, there's one story about a boy whose dad is a minotaur, and another about a boy who uses a pair of underwater goggles to look for the spirit of his dead sister.

Have you read any of these authors? What did you think?

Monday Amusements 6

Photo by cometstarmoon

I haven't done one of these in a while so you'll find some of these links were posted two months ago! Enjoy!

Beth Bloom, author of Drain You, talked to Jamie of The Broke and the Bookish about 90's culture and life as a teen in that decade. I was not a teenager until the year 2000, so I found it really interesting. On the same blog, Tahleen takes a literary trip to Hawaii is a great book list.

C.J. Daugherty has posted an extract from Night School: Legacy which has made me even more excited about its upcoming release. There is also enormous novelty value in the fact that I've actually read Night School - this is one of the few times since I started this blog that I've read the first book in a series before the promotion starts for the second!

Luisa Plaja shared her favourite 20th Century UKYA books. It can be easy to get swept up in the tide of new releases and forget about authors' backlists, but I love reading about YA/teen fiction that isn't so recent, and I've reviewed a fair bit of it myself.

I really liked Clover's twist on the Top Ten Kick-Ass Heroines theme for Top Ten Tuesday.

For Halloween, For Book's Sake gave us Beulah's My Three Favourite Scary Sisters, and a Top 5 Short Story Collections for Halloween.

I missed seeing this in time to post it when you could still make a reservation, but isn't this collection of clothing made from book-patterned fabric absolutely amazing? (Via Rie of The Awkward Turtle Breeding Ground, who also shared thatmadgirl's plan for a fanfiction storytelling card game.

If you're trying not to buy any more books for yourself in the run up to Christmas, SisterSpooky is here for you. But if you just can't stop, Makeshift Bookmark presents Top Ten Rationales for Obsessive Book Buying.

On a more serious note, Cicely tackles the subject of slut-shaming in YA. Happily, I don't come across it too often, especially in UKYA, but occasionally I will read a book in which the shy, self-deprecating, romantically-inexperienced protagonist has a mean-girl enemy that she, and apparently the author, considers to be too promiscuous. It's not only wrong, but also lazy, to rely on outdated stereotypes of good girls vs bad girls for characterisation.

No favourite reviews this time, as I felt like I was promoting the same few blogs over and over again. They are of course wonderful, but variety is the spice of life. I have added a few new blogs to my RSS reader recently, so hopefully I'll be turning the spotlight onto them next time.

BlogINK Competition Entry: On Not Reading Before Bed: A Manifesto

Hello all! Interrupting my usual service to let you know that I have entered the MIRAInk BlogINK competition to win a contract to be the MiraINK paid blogger for a year.

Please check out my entry and leave a comment:

On Not Reading Before Bed: A Manifesto

Or, ‘I Just Can’t Read Before Bed and Continue to Function in the Real World’

Book Review: Ash, by Malinda Lo

Photo by Moyan Brenn

When Ash's mother dies, her father remarries, but he doesn't live much longer himself. Ash finds herself at the mercy of her ruthless stepmother Lady Isobel and stepsisters Ana and Clara. She is forced to move away from her childhood home and work as a servant, and she copes by developing an obsession with her book of fairytales.

Ash thinks the fairy she meets in the Wood holds the key to her escape, though it may mean death and leaving everything she knows behind. But when she meets the King's Huntress, she starts to change her mind...

This is a book which is all about beautiful imagery and evocative language. The atmosphere is as important as the plot, which is pretty straightforward. The characterisation falls by the wayside a little - although Ash, Lady Isabel, Ana, Clara, and Sidhean were all very clear for me, I thought that Ash's mother and Kaisa were a bit too quickly drawn. There isn't much worldbuilding either, but traditional fairy tales don't really have worldbuilding, so I didn't mind. We learn enough to make the story work.

I loved the idea of the Royal Hunt led by the King's Huntress. It was a great way to work a female character with power and royal connections into the story, and the rituals involved in the hunt evoked history and tradition. I also really enjoyed the sections set at Lady Isobel's sister's house, where Ash is easily accepted by the other staff and joins them at the Yule bonfire. These busy scenes made a excellent contrast with Ash's many walks alone in the Wood.

If you need all your fiction to be snappy and plot-driven and don't want to spend time going on the occasional tangent and following dream sequences, Ash is probably not for you.But if you like books that are a little ethereal, give it a go.

If you are a fan of fairy tale retellings, I would consider Ash to be a must-read. I loved seeing how Malinda Lo twists and rearranges all the typical fairy tale elements. The fairy godmother becomes a slightly menacing fairy man and the three balls take place weeks apart. She also makes the traditional - and new - villains of the story seem at least partly sympathetic, which was interesting, and realistic.

I'm looking forward to reading Huntress, which is a loosely-connected prequel, and learning more about the traditions of the Royal Hunt, and meeting more of Malinda Lo's characters.