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A review by eesh25
The Iron King by Julie Kagawa
2.0
When it comes to romance novels, it's become pretty easy for me to avoid crappy read. There are so many authors I already love, and reviews help. And since I read so much romance last year, I didn't get many disappointing reads. In fact, this one might be the most disappointing of them all.
The story is about a fifteen-year-old girl whose younger brother is taken by a faery and replaced with a changeling. And to bring him back home, Meghan, along with her best friend who, it turns out, is a faery himself, embarks on a journey through the land of faery. And on the way, she makes some discoveries about who she is.
But what she makes more, is dumb choices. Meghan started as a good protagonist. She was surprisingly ordinary, just a teenage girl trying to survive high school. And that gave gravity to her decision to go into dangerous and unknown lands, to save her brother. She was the reason that I actually enjoyed the first quarter of the novel. But things started to go downhill soon after. The moment she landed in faery, really.
The problem started with the lack of world-building. I mean, I've read plenty of fae-related books, so I'm fairly familiar with them. Which was a good thing since the book didn't bother explaining much. Other than a few references to A Midsummer Night's Dream, that is. Then came other problems.
I don't know if Meghan lacked a personality from the beginning, and I didn't notice, or if the author deleted it after, but if there were ever a zero-dimensional character, Meghan's it. She's nothing beyond what the plot needs her to be. The other characters—the best friend, the brother, the love interest—were all one-dimensional. Don't even get me started on the villains, who were cartoonish and reminded me of an animated series from Cartoon Network. And not even one of the good ones.
In terms of the writing, the book read like a middle-grade novel with the story of a mediocre children's book. Combine that with a plot that was driven solely by plot-relevant things simply happening to the protagonist, or her making dumb decisions with little explanation, all so the author could get the story to her planned destination...
By the end, I was just glad to be done with the book. So it's safe to say that I'm not reading the sequel. I'm not quite ready to give up on the author just yet, but it'll probably be a while before I pick up something of hers again.
The story is about a fifteen-year-old girl whose younger brother is taken by a faery and replaced with a changeling. And to bring him back home, Meghan, along with her best friend who, it turns out, is a faery himself, embarks on a journey through the land of faery. And on the way, she makes some discoveries about who she is.
But what she makes more, is dumb choices. Meghan started as a good protagonist. She was surprisingly ordinary, just a teenage girl trying to survive high school. And that gave gravity to her decision to go into dangerous and unknown lands, to save her brother. She was the reason that I actually enjoyed the first quarter of the novel. But things started to go downhill soon after. The moment she landed in faery, really.
The problem started with the lack of world-building. I mean, I've read plenty of fae-related books, so I'm fairly familiar with them. Which was a good thing since the book didn't bother explaining much. Other than a few references to A Midsummer Night's Dream, that is. Then came other problems.
I don't know if Meghan lacked a personality from the beginning, and I didn't notice, or if the author deleted it after, but if there were ever a zero-dimensional character, Meghan's it. She's nothing beyond what the plot needs her to be. The other characters—the best friend, the brother, the love interest—were all one-dimensional. Don't even get me started on the villains, who were cartoonish and reminded me of an animated series from Cartoon Network. And not even one of the good ones.
In terms of the writing, the book read like a middle-grade novel with the story of a mediocre children's book. Combine that with a plot that was driven solely by plot-relevant things simply happening to the protagonist, or her making dumb decisions with little explanation, all so the author could get the story to her planned destination...
By the end, I was just glad to be done with the book. So it's safe to say that I'm not reading the sequel. I'm not quite ready to give up on the author just yet, but it'll probably be a while before I pick up something of hers again.