Review: The Lost Prince, by Julie Kagawa

Author: Julie Kagawa

Title:  The Lost Prince

Series: The Iron Fey: Call of the Forgotten (#1)

ISBN: 9780373210572

Publisher: Harlequin Teen (October 23^rd 2012)

Disclaimer: Copy received for review

Buy your copy: Paperback | Kindle

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Don’t look at Them. Never let Them know you can see Them.

That is Ethan Chase’s unbreakable rule. Until the fey he avoids at all costs—including his reputation—begin to disappear, and Ethan is attacked. Now he must change the rules to protect his family. To save a girl he never thought he’d dare to fall for.

Ethan thought he had protected himself from his older sister’s world—the land of Faery. His previous time in the Iron Realm left him with nothing but fear and disgust for the world Meghan Chase has made her home, a land of myth and talking cats, of magic and seductive enemies. But when destiny comes for Ethan, there is no escape from a danger long, long forgotten.

This novel is one of Julie’s books that will have you demanding for the second one as soon as you finish your read.” GoodReads’ blurb

You don’t really know how much you truly loved a series until you’re given the chance to go back when you thought it was over. Frankly, at this point in time I can safely say that if Julie Kawaga wrote anything at all in the Nevernever, I’d read it and it’d feel like coming back home.

That’s what happened when I read the Lost Prince, and I want to say it right away so you understand how truly difficult it is for me to be objective about the story—The Iron Fey are the single reason I’m reading YA, writing YA these days.

Little disclaimer out of the way... Amazing plot! It was planted in the fourth book of Iron Fey, even if we didn’t see it back then, and now things are unfolding and the world is about to be plunged into chaos once more. The Lost Prince might stand at nearly 400 pages, but it felt ridiculously short to me. While I picked up real quick on who the weird fey were, I enjoyed watching how Ethan and the others came to the same conclusion. I didn’t exactly buy their motivation to get to the bottom of the issue, since Ethan’s a self-proclaimed fey-hater, but...

Talking about Ethan now, he got me in just the first paragraph. The looks, the attitude, the martial arts... He was perfect! Then, of course, he did mess up. I mean, I had to roll my eyes at the oh-so-obvious way he behaved towards his love interest. To be honest, it grated on me a little that he kept insisting on “I am badass and I’m pushing her away” while his acts spoke an entirely different story. Same with his “I’m not involved” speeches, leading up to risking his life for total fey strangers.

Then again, by the end, when we learn about his beloved, uh... issues, I had grown to like them like a couple and that’d not have happened if he had actually pushed her away. Perhaps I just wanted him to be more honest with himself if not with the world, to call a pot a pot. Perhaps I have been previously spoiled by Ash and Puck as POV males in Julie Kagawa’s universe, I don’t know, but the truth is that this particular character flaw made the way he fell in love less real and made me less sympathetic towards his plight.

Kierran is... well, am I the only one who kept expecting him to turn bad? Like, boy, you can’t be this perfect and this self-assured and this honorable when you’re this young. I bet not even Ash himself was like that! I can’t wait to see what happens with him in the future; we’ve seen such a solid, consistent face of Kierran that I’m sure the other shoe is just about to be dropped on our heads.

The Lost Prince is the first book in a new series, but the continuity it offers to Iron Knight (and Iron’s Prophecy) makes it look like one single timeline in my humble opinion. That idea was reinforced by cameo appearances of Meghan, Ash and Puck—I loved seeing them from the outside after having been in their heads, seeing how they’ve changed and how they still are the same. I’m not sure this will be a good thing or a bad thing for the series, because those presences, larger than life, hovering over the new characters and the new romances and the new challenges, might make it harder to judge the one aside from the other (as is my case).

But the cameos mean Grimmalkin, and we all know I’m a proud member of Team Grim, so... I’m counting it as “good” for now! :)

All in all, while the character development was more shallow when compared to the Iron Fey and I don’t know yet if they new generation will live up to or surpass the old, the joy of revisiting the Nevernever once more is reason enough to pre-order this novel and read it the moment you can get your hands on it.