The Iron King (review)

Meghan Chase has never quite fit in with either her classmates or her family, and the eve of her sixteenth birthday sets her even further apart. Convinced that she must be hallucinating after seeing a gnome-like creature in her school's computer lab and a dark stranger lurking in the swampy woods, she's even more disconcerted by what she finds at home: a vicious changeling that has replaced her sweet younger brother. It's her friend Robbie who explains this to Meghan, and he also casually informs her that he is in fact a faery known as Robin Goodfellow, better known as Puck. A practical girl, Meghan accepts these revelations with relative ease and ventures into Nevernever with the intention of retrieving her brother, but she must first confront her faery king father, bargain with demons, and battle magical beings, including the forces of the frightening Iron King. The story is all action, with Meghan running from one danger to the next, but Kagawa manages to keep each chase scene fresh with monstrous creatures and a breathless pace. The book, first in a planned series, draws fruitfully on many predecessors: Nevernever's eerie strangeness takes a few cues from Lewis Carroll, while the mythology of the faerie courts pays homage to both Shakespeare and Spenser, making this an interesting companion to a classroom unit. Not that it'll need classroom introduction to garner readers, though—fans of Melissa Marr and Lesley Livingston, for instance, will be as likely to read this title illicitly under the desk during class as for class assignment. The Iron King and his terrifying minions are an intriguing innovation, and the idea that the world of Faerie is shaped by the nightmares of mortals, including their fears of progress and technology, gives the series wide scope for deliciously frightening fantasy.