Scan barcode
argentrabe's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
joth1006's review against another edition
Böckerna om Ketty Jay är något av ett guilty pleasure för mig.
publius's review against another edition
4.0
Mix together the swashbuckling of The Pirates of the Caribbean, a shade of fast shooting action and espionage--on horseback--of Michael Garrison's The Wild Wild West, and a bit of the personalities from Ocean's 11 (pick 1960 or 2001--it doesn't matter), and drop them all in a world with demons, magic, curses, and airships.
That would give you just a glimpse of what you can expect from [b:The Iron Jackal|9931820|The Iron Jackal (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #3)|Chris Wooding|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302819645s/9931820.jpg|14824887], the third in Chris Wooding's Tales of the Ketty Jay. It's a fast, energetic ride, a swashbuckling adventure in a vividly colorful world full of heroes and villains, intrigue and mystery, and empires and exploration.
The Iron Jackal opens with Captain Frey and his crew finally catching a break. One heist later, Frey is romancing his old flame, his crew is awash in cash, and the world is their oyster. Naturally, it's a perfect place for everything to go pot.
Cursed, hunted, and with death scheduled in just a few days time, Frey and his crew are on a quest that will test their ingenuity, their sanity, and their loyalty to each other and the Ketty Jay.
I enjoyed it thoroughly. Wooding's characters are diverse, fully conceived, and vibrant, and he uses each scene not only to build the tension, but to build his cast's relevance to the story and to each other.
If you haven't read the first or second installments in the Tales of the Ketty Jay, you don't need to start from the beginning. Each stands alone and can be read without the others. That said, pick them up from the beginning, and enjoy a fantastic story, full of complex characters and creative plots.
The Iron Jackal was originally released in 2011 by Gollancz and has been rereleased this year by Titan. I gotta admit: as much as I enjoyed the book, I hated the cover. This is one book you do not want to judge by its cover.
That would give you just a glimpse of what you can expect from [b:The Iron Jackal|9931820|The Iron Jackal (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #3)|Chris Wooding|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1302819645s/9931820.jpg|14824887], the third in Chris Wooding's Tales of the Ketty Jay. It's a fast, energetic ride, a swashbuckling adventure in a vividly colorful world full of heroes and villains, intrigue and mystery, and empires and exploration.
The Iron Jackal opens with Captain Frey and his crew finally catching a break. One heist later, Frey is romancing his old flame, his crew is awash in cash, and the world is their oyster. Naturally, it's a perfect place for everything to go pot.
Cursed, hunted, and with death scheduled in just a few days time, Frey and his crew are on a quest that will test their ingenuity, their sanity, and their loyalty to each other and the Ketty Jay.
I enjoyed it thoroughly. Wooding's characters are diverse, fully conceived, and vibrant, and he uses each scene not only to build the tension, but to build his cast's relevance to the story and to each other.
If you haven't read the first or second installments in the Tales of the Ketty Jay, you don't need to start from the beginning. Each stands alone and can be read without the others. That said, pick them up from the beginning, and enjoy a fantastic story, full of complex characters and creative plots.
The Iron Jackal was originally released in 2011 by Gollancz and has been rereleased this year by Titan. I gotta admit: as much as I enjoyed the book, I hated the cover. This is one book you do not want to judge by its cover.
badmc's review
5.0
The good: This series improves with every new instalment. Characters grow, plot flows, action keeps on delivering.
The bad: Well, our crew is still blundering around without much thought. I'd like to see them more driven by their own will, instead of circumstances.
The ugly: The portrayal of Trinica is still a bit unnerving to me - "moody" Pirate Queen mask, really, Frey? I get it, he is clueless, but I hope that she gets to be herself in the next book, with less of Frey's imaginings of "his Trinica".
The bad: Well, our crew is still blundering around without much thought. I'd like to see them more driven by their own will, instead of circumstances.
The ugly: The portrayal of Trinica is still a bit unnerving to me - "moody" Pirate Queen mask, really, Frey? I get it, he is clueless, but I hope that she gets to be herself in the next book, with less of Frey's imaginings of "his Trinica".
kelvie103's review
5.0
Love this one, I think it's the best of the series so far, probably helped by the fact that I listened to the audiobook and the narrator is amazing. He really brings the characters to life and I love them all so much. The character arcs are great and all the characters have gone through so much growth since the first book, you really get to know them by this one. Even though I'm not really into the steam punk setting the story is alot of fun and really well written and there were more than a few times I burst out laughing at some of the one liners. Will be sad when I finish the last book.
hannahmarae's review
5.0
So rereading this again, I think The Iron Jackal might be my favorite of the series? So much awesome happens in this book! Ashua is a great edition, Frey's story with Trinica is amazing, and Crake is, as always, brilliant. The Ketty Jay books are just pure fun!
threerings's review
3.0
Review Originally Posted on Steam Ingenious:
(I was provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.)
This book is actually the third in the series called "The Tales of the Ketty Jay." I haven't read the first two and although I knew there was some sort of prequel, I didn't realize this was the third book. For the most part I was able to read this as a stand alone novel without any problems. However, I do wonder if a lot of my confusion about the setting, at least at the beginning of the book was due to not having read the previous entries.
The Iron Jackal is part of a growing subgenre of steampunk stories: airship pirate stories. The action follows the crew of the ship The Ketty Jay and their various adventures. And action is certainly the right word. The book mostly consists of one large action set-piece after another, with lots of shooting, running, flying, and some more shooting. This book isn't at all afraid of violence and having its heroes kill people.
In fact, I have to say that the high body count and cavalier attitude to slaughter turned me off a bit at first. The book opens with a fairly lengthy section about a train heist. The heist is taking place in the fictional country of Samarla, which has a fairly complicated social structure that took me a while to understand. The country seems to be modeled somewhat on India, with three different nationalities: the Samarlans, Daks, and Murthians. To the best of my understanding the Samarlans (the villains of the piece) are dark skinned, while the two races they enslave are lighter skinned. So there's quite a lot of time spent with our light-skinned European-analogue heroes killing lots of evil dark-skinned people.
It was enough to make me give the book quite the side-eye. I'm not sure why you would set your story up that way, especially having the dark-skinned people be slavers of lighter skinned (not sure exactly what that means, but blond hair was mentioned) people who ultimately the heroes end up rescuing. One of the advantages of setting steampunk stories in a fantasy universe would be avoiding the colonialist heritage of our own history. So I'm not sure why you'd set things up to be, well, problematic in an entirely new way.
So, if you can get past that issue, (which continued to crop up and nag at me throughout the book) you may find this book quite enjoyable. Particularly if you enjoy lots of action in your narratives. The action is well-written and mostly well-paced although I felt some sequences, especially the opening heist took too long. The overall plot is very strong, but suffers from the novel taking nearly 100 pages to actually get to the main plot, and other delays along the way. The novel is quite long for an adventure novel, the trade paperback clocking in at 479 pages.
One of the strengths of the book is definitely its characters. The Ketty Jay has quite a lot of crew members, and they all (or maybe most) have detailed and divergent backstories. At first I felt like I didn't quite have a handle on the characters, since so much early on focused on action. But by the end I was getting attached to them and several of them were nicely fleshed out and developed over the course of the story.
As for the world itself, I do miss the Victorian parts of steampunk in the world of the Ketty Jay. This book is much closer to the TV show Firefly than anything Victorian. There are airships and weird tech, but most of the tech is based on a supernatural force called daemonism rather than steam or real-world technology. So it's a world that would sit better with the post-apocalyptic crowd than the neo-Victorian. And that's fine if that's your thing, but I find myself missing the fancy side of things.
Basically I think that I'm not the ideal audience for this novel, being that action in books isn't one of my favorite things, and that I prefer my steampunk to have strong Victorian elements one way or another. But it is well written and ultimately rewarding.
(I was provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.)
This book is actually the third in the series called "The Tales of the Ketty Jay." I haven't read the first two and although I knew there was some sort of prequel, I didn't realize this was the third book. For the most part I was able to read this as a stand alone novel without any problems. However, I do wonder if a lot of my confusion about the setting, at least at the beginning of the book was due to not having read the previous entries.
The Iron Jackal is part of a growing subgenre of steampunk stories: airship pirate stories. The action follows the crew of the ship The Ketty Jay and their various adventures. And action is certainly the right word. The book mostly consists of one large action set-piece after another, with lots of shooting, running, flying, and some more shooting. This book isn't at all afraid of violence and having its heroes kill people.
In fact, I have to say that the high body count and cavalier attitude to slaughter turned me off a bit at first. The book opens with a fairly lengthy section about a train heist. The heist is taking place in the fictional country of Samarla, which has a fairly complicated social structure that took me a while to understand. The country seems to be modeled somewhat on India, with three different nationalities: the Samarlans, Daks, and Murthians. To the best of my understanding the Samarlans (the villains of the piece) are dark skinned, while the two races they enslave are lighter skinned. So there's quite a lot of time spent with our light-skinned European-analogue heroes killing lots of evil dark-skinned people.
It was enough to make me give the book quite the side-eye. I'm not sure why you would set your story up that way, especially having the dark-skinned people be slavers of lighter skinned (not sure exactly what that means, but blond hair was mentioned) people who ultimately the heroes end up rescuing. One of the advantages of setting steampunk stories in a fantasy universe would be avoiding the colonialist heritage of our own history. So I'm not sure why you'd set things up to be, well, problematic in an entirely new way.
So, if you can get past that issue, (which continued to crop up and nag at me throughout the book) you may find this book quite enjoyable. Particularly if you enjoy lots of action in your narratives. The action is well-written and mostly well-paced although I felt some sequences, especially the opening heist took too long. The overall plot is very strong, but suffers from the novel taking nearly 100 pages to actually get to the main plot, and other delays along the way. The novel is quite long for an adventure novel, the trade paperback clocking in at 479 pages.
One of the strengths of the book is definitely its characters. The Ketty Jay has quite a lot of crew members, and they all (or maybe most) have detailed and divergent backstories. At first I felt like I didn't quite have a handle on the characters, since so much early on focused on action. But by the end I was getting attached to them and several of them were nicely fleshed out and developed over the course of the story.
As for the world itself, I do miss the Victorian parts of steampunk in the world of the Ketty Jay. This book is much closer to the TV show Firefly than anything Victorian. There are airships and weird tech, but most of the tech is based on a supernatural force called daemonism rather than steam or real-world technology. So it's a world that would sit better with the post-apocalyptic crowd than the neo-Victorian. And that's fine if that's your thing, but I find myself missing the fancy side of things.
Basically I think that I'm not the ideal audience for this novel, being that action in books isn't one of my favorite things, and that I prefer my steampunk to have strong Victorian elements one way or another. But it is well written and ultimately rewarding.
isabelalexander1998's review
5.0
If there was an infinite amount of space on the internet, I still would not be able to convey just how much I loved this book.
I think it's the characters really, they are what makes this series so utterly brilliant.
In this adventure, the characters are developed even further.
Harkins will always be my favourite crew member and in this one, he did not disappoint me. Although he is still adorably nervous, he ceases to be entirely pointless as he is forced to fly in an illegal race. I think the race scenes were my favourite part of the story.
Pinn has consistently irritated me throughout this series but in this one, he stopped getting on my nerves and only managed to make me laugh. The flame slime has was another highlight fir me.
Trinica Drackenneeds to either agree to like Frey or GO AWAY. I hate her considerably.
Freyis more human in this one and is less obnoxious. Also, I loved Ashua and Crake taking the mickey out of his small vocabulary.
Crake is much better now that he is not so worried about his crime (Samandra Bree, what on earth are you doing?!)
Jez was very interesting and I like the way she is slowly becoming more and more Mane. (And, does she fancy the captain or was I totally confused at the end there?)
Silo really came into his own in this one! I'm not 100% sure I like the idea of him being first mate but we'll see.
Malvery...what a hero!! He really does deserve that medal although I am slightly worried about him starting a whole civil war thing but it might make some interesting reading.
In other news:
The Iron Jackal is a TERRIFYING villain. I mean, bayonet fingers?! I'd run.
The story in itself was a page turner and I still feel like I am watching a movie (and what a great movie it would make).
I am going to rush off somewhere in the near future and find myself a copy of The Ace Of Skulls, and then I will hide myself away from the world and devour it.
Great book.
I think it's the characters really, they are what makes this series so utterly brilliant.
In this adventure, the characters are developed even further.
Harkins
Pinn
Trinica Dracken
Frey
Crake
Jez
Silo
Malvery...
In other news:
The Iron Jackal is a TERRIFYING villain. I mean, bayonet fingers?! I'd run.
The story in itself was a page turner and I still feel like I am watching a movie (and what a great movie it would make).
I am going to rush off somewhere in the near future and find myself a copy of The Ace Of Skulls, and then I will hide myself away from the world and devour it.
Great book.
theinkdarksea's review against another edition
5.0
These books were always good, but Wooding didn't show his hand, being the extent of his planning ability and mastery of story, until this third installment. I want the Ace of Skulls now. I would probably stay up all night to read it if you put it in front of me at this very moment.