The Iron King

by Julie Kagawa

Dedication: "To Nick, Brandon, and Villis. May we continue to beat those dead horses into the ground."

First paragraph: "The Ghost Computer

Ten years ago, on my sixth birthday, my father disappeared."

Review: Meghan Chase's father disappeared - vanished without a trace. After that her mother picked them up and moved them to a remote town where her mother married a pig farmer and tried to forget the past - only the past couldn't forget her. Suddenly Meghan is seeing strange things and soon her half-brother, Ethan goes missing and a strange doppelganger has taken his place. Meghan has to risk everything to get him back.

Oh and there's some love story in there somewhere too.

The first 150 pages did not really pull me in. They were okay - not great, but not bad. Just okay. I'm still not quite sure why I was so indifferent about this part of the book. My only explanation is that the premise of the story spoke more to younger readers but the story itself was much too dark for someone of that age group to be reading it. Or maybe 150 pages is how long it took Kagawa to get going with her writing?

Either way. The last two-thirds of the book was great. I couldn't put it down until I was finished. There was a lot of creativity put in to describing the Nevernever, faery world, and the characters within it. Speaking of characters, Puck. While I do feel sort of bad for Puck at times, he annoyed me. Maybe I just dislike people who have to crack a joke whenever tension is running high. I still like him but I like Ash better, I think.

That being said, there are three books in this series - The Iron King, The Iron Daughter, and The Iron Queen.

They've all been released and are ready for reading today!

Click here for Julie Kagawa's website and the books in The Iron Fey series.