The Iron King

Meghan has just turned sixteen and feels like she’s a nonentity. She lives in a backwater on the outskirts of town, gets mostly teased or ignored by kids at school, and her stepfather seems to always forget she even exists. She’s got one good friend- a neighbor boy she’s known for years, good-hearted and mischevious. One day everything suddenly changes, when she comes home to find her mother bleeding on the floor, her little brother standing over her with a knife. I almost stopped reading right there- scenes that feel out of a horror movie don’t appeal to me! but kept going and ended up mostly enjoying this book. Turns out the little brother was swapped for an evil changeling, the neighbor boy is really Puck, and the fey realm is real- just alongside reality, once Meghan’s eyes are opened. Because she’s half-fey herself, which is only the first of her discoveries. She gets pulled into their dark, baffling and beautiful world in search of her missing brother, pitched into a quest that soon becomes much larger than just finding Ethan. This story was full of good elements- it has a love triangle that sneaks up on you, a delightfully snarky  talking cat sidekick (reminscent of the Cheshire Cat but I agree with someone who said his personality is more like the cat in The Last Unicorn). The more Meghan traipses around through faeryland, first just trying to find out where her brother is, then how to reach him, with all sorts of dangerous obstacles to overcome along the way- the further away her goal seems to get. Due to her mixed blood, she has abilities the other fey lack (withstanding the touch of iron, for one) and thus the controlling powers of both Summer and Winter courts want to use her. But she finds there’s a more dangerous entity out there than King Oberon or the others- a new type of fey risen from the obsessions of humanity with technology. This story really plays on the idea of faeries existing due to human belief, and how that can change- in a way I’d never seen before. I liked the concept, the execution of it was a bit too steampunk or urban fantasy for my taste, but that’s okay (I’m not really the target audience: this book is labeled ‘teen harlequin’ on the cover). If I’d read this some thirty years ago, maybe I’d feel compelled to continue with the series- as is, it was an engaging and entertaining read, but not quite in-depth enough to satisfy me. I did really like some of the side characters- the ones Meghan dubbed ‘packrats’ made me think of certain figures from James Christensen’s artwork, and I found that charming.

Borrowed from the public library.