Comic Review (ARC): Julie Kagawa's The Iron King #1 (of 4)

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Julie Kagawa's: The Iron King #1 (of 4)
Digital release date: 8/26/13
Print Release date: 10/23/13
writer: Julie Kagawa & Sara Gundell
Artist: Lidia Chan

Blue Water Comics

Julie Kagawa's website

Based off the New York Times best-selling novels. The Iron King is the first book in the Iron Fey series, and follows the adventures of a girl named Meghan Chase. On her sixteenth birthday, Meghan discovers her little brother has been kidnapped by a faery race known as "the Fey" and even worse, replaced with an evil changeling and taken into the "Nevernever." Meghan bravely ventures into the faery realm to rescue him, and that's where an epic plot unfolds.

I haven’t read Julie Kagawa’s Iron Fey series, but I have been wanting too. So I was thrilled to find out there would be a graphic novel based on the first book The Iron King. This is a young adult series and I am not a big reader of young adult, but I am a sucker for anything Fae. Not only is this a graphic novel, but it is done in the Japanese Manga style, which I enjoy.

The narrative parts of the story are easy to follow, but I had trouble in a couple of areas figuring out what happened in the action. It felt like there were gaps in the story where it was assumed I could fill in, which I probably could if I had read the novel. The art work is black and white and I don’t think there was a single rectangular panel throughout; staying true to the manga style. 

It is definitely geared towards their young adult audience, but I enjoyed the story and there was a great cliff hanger ending that has me wanting the next issue. This is a good start to a very promising graphic novel series.

Julie Kagawa was able to turn her best-selling book into graphic novel form with the help of Blue Water Production and a very successful Indigo campaign. If you go to the Indigo page you can see many videos and images from the making of the comic. There is a lot of awesome artwork there.

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4 “changeling” Sheep

Sharon Stogner

The Tears of Elios by author Crista McHugh + Kindle giveaway!

The Tears of Elios, written by Crista McHugh, is the first book in her new series called 'The Elgan Chronicles'. A fantastical world of magic sucks the reader in for a journey stretching across a mystical action packed realm.

Synopsis:

Shape-shifters’ Rule #1: Don’t let the humans know you still exist. Rule #2: If a human finds out about you, silence them. Some rules were meant to be broken… Ranealya ruthlessly plays by the rules and has outlived most of her race because of it. If she wants to survive, she’ll have to stick to them, especially with a genocidal tyrant hell-bent on destroying all the non-humans in the realm. But everything falls apart when a human saves her life. Gregor knows he’s inviting trouble when he helps a wounded shape-shifter, but he can’t pass up the opportunity to study one before they become extinct. She disturbs the quiet order of his scholarly existence, vexes him in more ways than he can count, and encourages him to break enough of the kingdom’s laws so that not even being the king’s cousin will save his head. The problem is, he’s already lost his heart.

First I'd like to say that a few editing errors unfortunately got missed before the book was published. I've spoken personally to Crista and she's on top of getting the problem rectified. But for those that get a copy before any changes can be address please make note of this. This was one of the only drawbacks to the story. It's a little frustrating to get caught up in a story then have words missing or used in the wrong places. I also would have liked to get a bit more character description and backstory which would allow me to get invested in the characters more. I felt that, without the backstory, the characters in the books seemed a little less fleshed out.

The story has a wonderful twist in which you get two different sets of main characters who end up intermixing their storylines towards the end. I was blown away by the creative world Crista has compiled in her novels. It takes some new ideas about magic and mixes in old folklore and other more traditional ideas. I'm not sure if I could call this story is UF or High Fantasy, but it's definitely one that the young adult crowd would also be able to dive into. For those needing some smut in their lives *cough me cough* you wont get much of that here. And while I understand some people think that it draws away from the story *cough Ben cough* it's always a great bonus to a good book in my opinion.

Fairies playing nasty tricks and humans wanting to take over the realm keep the reader turning the pages to find out what could possibly happen next. Characters dealing with choices from the past and moving forward into the future keep the book relevant and relateable to our own lives while still having fantastical elements. Overall the story is a great first start with some kinks that will inevitably get worked out I look forward to more books from this series.

Getting 2 and 1/2 Hellhound Sheep

KD

***Giveaway***

Would you like to win a Kindle for the Holidays? Crista McHugh is giving away a Kindle this Holiday season!

Check out her blog HERE each Monday morning from October 31-December 5, 2011, for a question about one of her titles. The answer can either be found in the blurb or the excerpt. Email Crista the answer using the contact form on the webpage (because you don’t want to be sharing the answer with everyone on the blog). Each correct answer is an entry into the grand prize drawing. Every Sunday evening, a winner will be chosen from that week’s responses to receive a giftcard.