The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa

The Iron Daughter by Julie Kagawa

Published August 1st 2010 by Harlequin Teen
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From Goodreads: Half Summer faery princess, half human, Meghan has never fit in anywhere. Deserted by the Winter prince she thought loved her, she is prisoner to the Winter faery queen. As war looms between Summer and Winter, Meghan knows that the real danger comes from the Iron fey— ironbound faeries that only she and her absent prince have seen. But no one believes her.

Worse, Meghan's own fey powers have been cut off. She's stuck in Faery with only her wits for help. Trusting anyone would be foolish. Trusting a seeming traitor could be deadly. But even as she grows a backbone of iron, Meghan can't help but hear the whispers of longing in her all-too-human heart.

****Don't you dare read this if you haven't read the first book, The Iron King, it'll spoil your dinner and then you won't get any pie!****

Every girl wants to be a princess and for Meghan Chase her dreams came true on her sixteenth birthday. Turns out, she's the half faery daughter of the king of the Seelie court! She's a faery princess! She's...she's wrestling a snarling changeling who tries to eat her face when she realizes that her baby brother has been snatched by the Fae? Wait, what? This isn't a Disney movie where the faery princess gets everything she wants and lives happily ever after. This is the realm of the Summer and Winter faery courts, where the Fae behave just as they're meant to- viciously. She finds herself smack dab in the middle of an age old feud between the two faery courts, neither of which is happy to have a half human in their realms. Then there's the other court, the Iron Fey, a new bred of faeries with mechanical parts of iron, a metal that's deadly to the other Fae. And Prince Charming? Well when he pulled her into his arms at the ball and twirled her around the dance floor...he told her he was going to kill her.

Who the hell wants to be a faery princess.

When we last left Meghan, she had fallen madly in love with an assho- I mean Ash, a prince of the rival Winter court. She'd bested the Iron King, the one that was holding her baby brother captive. She even survived an attack by zombies. But perhaps the most reckless thing the daughter of Oberon, King of the Summer Court, did was to obligate herself to a Fae of the Winter Court. One does not make idle promises in the land of the Fae. Every pledge is a binding contract, and she has no choice but to go with Ash to the Winter Queen's court- where that rat bastard drops her off at his momma's house, then runs off to distance himself from Meghan "for her own good." He leaves. She's freezing. His mother's a witch. His brother's an evil asshat and any minute now Meghan is going to either get eaten or turned into an ice sculpture. And still she loves him.

My dear girl. A word of advice. When a man, (even one who's a devastatingly handsome prince who helped rescue your brother) leaves you "for your own good," you burn any of his crap he's left behind and date his best friend. You don't race across a frozen garden screaming "I LOVE YOU!" whilst surrounded by his relatives who all want to kill you. I'm trying to help you here Meghan. I'm trying to be understanding about your Ash fixation but it just keeps getting more and more hopeless. Ash saves her, leaves her, then almost kills her at least forty times in this book.

We have the reemergence of the Iron Fae, who break into the Winter court and steal the Scepter of the Seasons, a faery relic that is passed between the two courts to usher in the change of the seasons. Without it, spring can not give way to winter and vice-versa and it affects everything, even the human realm. Queen Mab declares war on Oberon, naming him as the thief and the two fairy courts prepare for battle. No one believes Meghan's claim that the Iron Fae stole the scepter, no one has ever seen them and neither of the monarchs want to believe in the existence of these deadly Fae. To stop the impending war, and clear her father's name, Meghan sets out to find the scepter and the new Iron King.

We meet so many interesting characters in this book. Leanansidhe was my favorite new addition. She's a powerful Fae who was banished by Queen Titania and now lives in the human world. She's so charmingly evil and surprisingly one of the only helpful fae that Meghan has encountered. IRONHORSE IS BACK. AND HE TALKS IN ALL CAPS. Love him. And Meghan runs into an enchanted human man living as a "pet" in Leanansidhe's house, and something about him bothers her- almost as if she should remember him but the memory is...missing. *BIG GRIN* That there was a teaser.

I freakin' love this series. I really do. Kagawa's world will not let you leave and you won't want to once you start reading it. So it's probably a bit confusing when I say, that as much as I'm loving this series, I really didn't get this book. It had SO MUCH going on and it felt packed and busy at times. We had everyone and everything from the last book as well as a slew of new somebodies and somethings. And I liked them, but the story line ran just on the edge of too much. It had too many notes.


"Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all."

Bring on book three!