Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Review: The Lost Prince by Julie Kagawa

The Lost Prince by Julie Kagawa The Lost Prince (The Iron Fey: Call of the Forgotten #1)
By Julie Kagawa
Publisher:
Harlequin Teen

To Sum It Up:

Ethan Chase can see the fey, and this unwanted ability has already cost him dearly. He’s spent his life pushing away anyone who might get too close to him because of the danger that the Sight seems to draw to him. Ethan never thought he’d find himself helping the very beings he hates, but when a new threat to the fey also poses one to him and his family, Ethan has no choice but to once again become involved in a world that he’s fought so hard to avoid.

Review:

After having my ups and downs with the original Iron Fey series, I wasn’t sure if I’d reach the point where I'd want to check out The Lost Prince. The Iron Knight concluded on a strong enough note for me to carry on reading about the world of Faery, though, and so I picked up the spin-off.

Initially, I wasn’t sure that I’d made the right decision to read this after all because I wasn’t digging Ethan Chase, the now teenage younger brother of The Iron Fey’s Meghan, as a narrator. Ethan has a colossal boulder on his shoulder, and he’s one angry young man. He blames the fey for just about everything that has ever gone wrong in his life, including getting kicked out of school a few times. Of course, there’s also the rather large issue of his sister being unable to see her family in the mortal world due to her responsibilities as the Iron Queen. Because his ability to see the fey often brings trouble, Ethan doesn’t want anyone to get close to him. This means he acts like a supreme jerk most of the time, pushing people away for what he thinks is their own safety. Although his intentions are good, my patience for his attitude dwindled quickly, and that’s why I didn’t see myself reading future books in this series.

Fortunately, Ethan mellows out some, and I found myself quite invested in the story once it shifted to the Iron Realm. Several familiar faces from the original Iron Fey series pop up (including the ever-wise Grimalkin—yay!), and I was even happy to see those whom I wasn’t exactly fond of in the other books (like Leanansidhe). The nice thing about this little reunion is that the old characters don’t overshadow the new ones, and their appearances don’t feel forced, like they’ve only been included for nostalgia’s sake.

I was a bit worried that The Lost Prince was going to wind up with a love triangle in an Ash-Meghan-Puck redux, but hooray! No love triangle! I was also a little leery of Keirran, a fey with some rather famous parents, turning into the Puck of this series because of his penchant for getting into mischief. But in another welcome surprise, Keirran was his own character. In fact, he ended up being my favorite character. Yeah, I can’t resist a charmer with a wicked glint in his eye.

After having to endure Ethan’s surliness for a good portion of the book, I really didn’t expect to enjoy The Lost Prince, but I did. Once Ethan realized he didn’t have to be so darn angry all the time, the story picked up considerably. Ethan, Keirran, and Ethan’s classmate, Kenzie, make a pretty good team, and I look forward to reading more of their adventures.

All in All:

The Lost Prince is a solid start to this spin-off series. The book smoothly transitions from its Iron Fey origins into a new story arc that should be intriguing to see play out.

6 comments:

  1. Oh nice review Lee! I was wondering how this book tied into the whole Iron Fey series but I didn't want to read too much about it online in case it was spoilery >.< I'm planing to get into the series soon enough (I hope!) so it's good to see that you were able to enjoy this despite the MC's 'issues' hehe Thanks for the insight, I'll be curious to compare thoughts when I finally do get caught up :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I really liked how the two series tied together. I thought it was well done and revisited the original Iron Fey books just enough without relying on them too heavily to get the new series off the ground.

      Delete
  2. Awesome! I was actually worried about starting this one because I was worried about how Ethan would act and how much he would hate the fey overall. Glad to hear that it does wane and the story picks up. Also nice to see some good new characters and old ones. Thank you so much for a great review! Jaclyn @ JC's Book Haven.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It did take a while for Ethan to dial down his anger, but once he did, I got into the story a lot more. I hope he continues to be more like the Ethan in the book's later chapters throughout the series.

      Delete
  3. Ethan's anger and overall surliness was definitely something I remember struggling with, but overall I ended up really enjoying this one! Like you said, I loved seeing some old characters, but they didn't overshadow the new, which was great.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I actually found myself realizing that I missed some of the old faces from the original series when they started showing up here. I really liked how they bridged the old series and the new one, while letting the new characters have their spotlight.

      Delete

We love hearing from our readers and do our best to reply. Thank you for taking the time to leave a comment!