Review: The Iron Sword

The Iron Sword by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Julie Kagawa likes to stick to a few certain patterns in her storytelling, I've found, and this latest book in the world of the Iron Fey breaks a few of those patterns. While previous series in this 'verse stuck to the same POV throughout, here Kagawa shifts away from Puck's POV (as was in this book's predecessor) in favor of Ash's, with a great deal of emphasis on him confronting his past failures and how they haunt him deeply. Thematically appropriate, given the revelations this book makes about the nature of Evenfall itself. And also thematically appropriate that it serves as a good allegory for a lot of today's problems in the world - namely, emphasizing the nature of the internet delivering fake news to rile up people of various political stripes. And while Kagawa doesn't break form with this book's cliffhanger ending - and make no mistake, she goes all out on that - what really makes this book cliffhang like none other is that, unlike virtually every such time Kagawa's done that before, we still have no idea what the next book will be called, or even when it'll come out. So brava, Kagawa, for this, one of your most solidly punchy and powerful books in many years.

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