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A review by lilithmoon
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
2.0
This book was overall not good for pretty much every reason... The book is split into two and after the first half I was very close to just putting it down and being rid if it. While it did get better in the second half, it wasn;t by a lot.
Why it sucks: (Yes, I'm making a list here!)
- Nothing was original... I know it is a story about fay and in a genre of books that tend to upcycle ideas or characters from other work but this book was just a bad combination of other book characters and ideas crammed together and made worse in the process. E.g Grimalkin, the cat is just a slightly evil version of the cat from Alice in Wonderland, Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream is just crammed into the cast when he could have very well been his own original character. Pretty much the main characters of of A Midsummer Night's Dream are used and it comes across that the author was too lazy to create her own characters so just used someone else's and made them emotionally flat. There are whole scenes in the book that are in other, more famous work, and they all get emotionally dumbed down for this story.
- Megan Chase is the worst main character. While reading the book I made some notes on what I thought about her and they went like this... "Not emotionally deep. So very dumb. So whiny. Doesn't have realistic reactions to anything, Pathetic." I just really didn't like her. At one point I was reading and realised I had completely forgotten Megan's name. He's just not what I want in a main character. (There was also one moment when she was suddenly smart but then returned to being dumb straight after, we love the consistency.)
- The romance that occurs is predictable and also completely undeveloped. It went from 'looking at a hot guy' to 5 seconds later 'being soulmates' with no real explanation as to how they suddenly felt this way. By the end I was really questioning why the two of them were in love, nothing in the story happened to justify their romance other than this book wanted romance to be a theme. I clearly missed the part where the characters built up a strong, passionate and loving relationship that I was meant to care about so instead felt like I was just watching two emotionally dull people pretend to be in love...
- I just didn't care by the end. You realise that nothing will be unexpected and the characters honestly should just die because at least that would be interesting.
Why I kept reading:
- Ash. At the strat when we didn't know who he was it offered some mystery to the book which was desperately needed. The part where they first meet is, in my opinion, the best part of the whole book. He might be the only interesting character in the story not directly taken from other literature.
- The plot was occasionally interesting when we got ino describing the interesting world of the Fay and the other creates. (Shout out to the "rat pack" for making the ending bearable...)
- We learn the rules of Fay society along with Megan so if you don't have a knowledge of Fay worlds from other books you can still read this book and not get confused.
I won't be bothering to read the next book in this series... Not recommended by me sorry.
Why it sucks: (Yes, I'm making a list here!)
- Nothing was original... I know it is a story about fay and in a genre of books that tend to upcycle ideas or characters from other work but this book was just a bad combination of other book characters and ideas crammed together and made worse in the process. E.g Grimalkin, the cat is just a slightly evil version of the cat from Alice in Wonderland, Puck from A Midsummer Night's Dream is just crammed into the cast when he could have very well been his own original character. Pretty much the main characters of of A Midsummer Night's Dream are used and it comes across that the author was too lazy to create her own characters so just used someone else's and made them emotionally flat. There are whole scenes in the book that are in other, more famous work, and they all get emotionally dumbed down for this story.
- Megan Chase is the worst main character. While reading the book I made some notes on what I thought about her and they went like this... "Not emotionally deep. So very dumb. So whiny. Doesn't have realistic reactions to anything, Pathetic." I just really didn't like her. At one point I was reading and realised I had completely forgotten Megan's name. He's just not what I want in a main character. (There was also one moment when she was suddenly smart but then returned to being dumb straight after, we love the consistency.)
- The romance that occurs is predictable and also completely undeveloped. It went from 'looking at a hot guy' to 5 seconds later 'being soulmates' with no real explanation as to how they suddenly felt this way. By the end I was really questioning why the two of them were in love, nothing in the story happened to justify their romance other than this book wanted romance to be a theme. I clearly missed the part where the characters built up a strong, passionate and loving relationship that I was meant to care about so instead felt like I was just watching two emotionally dull people pretend to be in love...
- I just didn't care by the end. You realise that nothing will be unexpected and the characters honestly should just die because at least that would be interesting.
Why I kept reading:
- Ash. At the strat when we didn't know who he was it offered some mystery to the book which was desperately needed. The part where they first meet is, in my opinion, the best part of the whole book. He might be the only interesting character in the story not directly taken from other literature.
- The plot was occasionally interesting when we got ino describing the interesting world of the Fay and the other creates. (Shout out to the "rat pack" for making the ending bearable...)
- We learn the rules of Fay society along with Megan so if you don't have a knowledge of Fay worlds from other books you can still read this book and not get confused.
I won't be bothering to read the next book in this series... Not recommended by me sorry.