The Iron King: Real pleasure for teen and adult readers

The Iron King by Julie Kagawa

The Iron King (2010) is just plain fun. Julie Kagawa takes sixteen-year-old Meghan Chase on a heroic journey through the lands of Faerie, where she meets a host of vivid characters and crosses unearthly landscapes in search of her missing kid brother. Along the way, she learns a dangerous secret about her parentage, gets caught up in a Faerie political struggle, and finds herself torn between two very different fey boys.

There’s an element of pastiche to The Iron King; readers may spot a dash of Lewis Carroll here, a smidge of Labyrinth there, a hearty dollop of Shakespeare, and even some Greek mythology. (Read the scene where Meghan meets Queen Titania and tell me there aren’t some serious Hera vibes going on.) Yet Kagawa successfully balances archetype and novelty. The familiar tropes make us feel like we’ve glimpsed this Faerie realm before and might be able to guess at its rules, but there are just enough surprises that the story feels fresh.

Meghan is a compelling heroine, sometimes annoying, but always interesting enough to drive us through the story. She’s kind of bratty at the beginning, fuming because her mom hasn’t bought her preferred breakfast cereal, but she grows over the course of her travels. She’s sometimes oblivious to the rules and customs of Faerie, and falls for tricks and traps that savvy readers will recognize before Meghan does. She’s brave, though, and stubborn, and quite clever at times. I look forward to seeing her develop further as the Iron Fey series progresses.

(And on the “no room to talk” front, I remember another teenage girl who used to get steamed about her parents’ bad taste in breakfast cereal. I won’t mention any names, but I will say that she grew up to be a blonde, bespectacled FanLit reviewer with a weakness for YA faerie lit.)

Compared to other popular writers in this subgenre — such as Holly Black, Melissa Marr, and Maggie Stiefvater — Kagawa’s work is less brooding. It’s not that Meghan doesn’t have reason to brood; she’s got plenty of that. She just doesn’t have time. The story moves quickly from one suspenseful moment to the next without much room for angst. There’s also less description. When Kagawa shows us a new vista, she describes it beautifully but briefly. These differences aren’t “good” or “bad” per se. In some moods I prefer one style, and in some moods I prefer the other, and your mileage may vary.

Oddly, I found it relatively easy to put down The Iron King between chapters. This isn’t because it’s in any way bad; it’s because it’s episodic. Meghan’s quest is always there as a driving force, but the individual chapters are almost stories in their own right. If you’ve read the Percy Jackson books, you know what I mean. Meghan moves closer to her goal, she meets a strange being or beings who try to help or harm her, that mini-arc is resolved, and we move on to the next chapter.

To sum up: The Iron King is a solid debut, and a real pleasure to read. I recommend it to teen and adult readers alike.