Rating:


Author: Julie Kagawa

Publication: January 25th, 2011

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Description: My name is Meghan Chase.

I thought it was over. That my time with the fey, the impossible choices I had to make, the sacrifices of those I loved, was behind me. But a storm is approaching, an army of Iron fey that will drag me back, kicking and screaming. Drag me away from the banished prince who's sworn to stand by my side. Drag me into the core of conflict so powerful, I'm not sure anyone can survive it.

This time, there will be no turning back.Via GoodReads.

My Review:

Out of all the Iron Fey novels so far, The Iron Queen is definitely my favorite. While it did have its slow moments, The Iron Queen held my emotions in a way that none of its predecesors did and my biggest qualm with the series up until now, Meghan's whinning and and inability to do anything, is finally resolved.

The first half of the book was really what forced me to give The Iron Queen a 4 heart rating instead of a 5. It seemed very slow to me and didn't keep my interest, even though it did have some actions scenes within it. Also, Meghan spends the first half of the book as she did much of the previous books: not doing a whole lot of anything, other than whinning that is. But after the first half, things really picked up. Meghan finally sees the error of her ways and does something about. She starts training and begins fighting her own battles. Not only that, but the action and story draw the reader in as the characters are forced to undertake a seemingly impossible mission and try to win a war of epic proportions. At this point, The Iron Queen also captured my emotions like the other books didn't, making me feel the heartbreak of loss and the utterly bittersweet feeling of the ending. I also felt the romance in this book much more than I did previously.

In the first two novels, the romance between Meghan and Ash seems cliche and much too instalove for me to really enjoy it. In The Iron Queen, however, I finally started to feel like the love between Meghan and the Winter Prince was real and profound. My love of Ash increased along with the believeabilty of the romacne, as we see that there is no limit to what Ash is willing to do for Meghan. I still felt bad for Puck though. Puck remains my favorite character in the Iron Fey series because of his wit and constant humor, along with his astounding tolerance of Meghan and her clear rejection of him as a love interest. Poor, poor Puck. Grim makes another reappearance in this book as well, bringing his sass right along with him. We also gain a few more fun characters in this story, Glitch and Razor. Not only did The Iron Queen improve as far as feeling and characters, but the beautiful writing from Kagawa continued as well.

Kagawa continues to amaze me with her creativity and talent. Think about it. How does one create such a unique world filled with things completely from their imagination, and be able to weave that world with thier words to create such a beautiful tapestry that anyone could see it perfectly in their mind's eye by reading a simple sentence. I don't always agree with what Kagawa writes, like how Meghan never ceased to get on my nerves in the previous books, but I cannot argue that her writing itself is anything short of amazing.

The Iron Queen had a lot of improvements compared to the first two books, like the romance and my newfound liking of Meghan, making it my favorite in the series thus far. As I said earlier, the ending is trully bittersweet. I won't give anything away of course, but I'm very happy that there's another book in this series. If you've read the first two books, I definitely recommend reading this book as well.

Summed Up:

This was my favorite book in the series so far. It had the same interesting storyline and great writing as the past books, but Meghan finally gets a backbone! The story was sometimes slow though.

Iron Fey Series

Review for #1: The Iron King
Review for #2: The Iron Daughter
Review for #3: The Iron Queen
Review for #3.5: Summer's Crossing - to come
Review for #4: The Iron Knight - to come