The Iron Hex by Victoria S. Walsh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This should have been a YA/Teen novel. Then it might have stood a chance or at least the prose feeling juvenile could be explained.
The overall plot, for me, felt is all a bit too parallel to major moments in our history. Something I rarely complain about; but on reflection maybe it’s just because it’s written in an obvious vernacular(?). Walsh combines a princess everyone thinks is dead (Russia’sAnastasia) during a take-over from a charismatic leader who (seemingly) speaks for the people by putting all their woes on one group of people, the witches. (Nazi Germany). None of these ideas are unique and many have been reused dozens of times; but here it just felt less cohesive and more like the plot points were stolen and dropped into a story just to be there.
For me,it’s a sad reality, that Walsh shows she is a debut writer. All you’d need to do to make this a YA book is take out 6 pages of awkward, poorly written sex. It was like someone told Walsh ‘thou shalt add a sex scene’ and so she did. The scene lacks any true tension, passion, and desire. It also lacked genuine check-ins or moments of concern for one another. Walsh tried to hit these but somehow they felt manufactured and not fluid for me. Thus, The Iron Hex fell flat for me and by the end I realized I just didn’t care about the cliffhanger or any of the characters.
It doesn’t help that I predicted every single one of the reveals. The first two, we get midway through the story, are very obvious, so I barely consider them reveals. A novel is a bit of a locked room mystery; you only have as many possible outcomes or people to blame as you have introduced (unless you have a cheap ending which is worse!). Therefore your reveals need to be clever, and I think one of them could have been if there had been a bit more backstory on a couple of characters. What is important is, in the end, everything has to come together in a good fantasy novel and it just doesn’t here.
When you are writing and being shelved next to the likes of Sanderson, Yarros, Stewart, Gwynne, and more the bar is high and so your quality needs to be at a higher level as well. Maybe that’s not totally fair, but the reality is that to be classified in the Romantasy adult genre these days, there’s competition abound. Whereas, over in teen, you can survive a few juvenile moments because it’s understood that your story needs to remain ‘cleaner’ (if you will) and maybe your prose can be at a level that doesn’t require the polish and lyricism I love in a good fantasy novel. That’s not to say YA can’t be amazing, as it can; it’s just to say that the genre affords a couple of compromises that could have benefited Walsh.
I’m stepping away from The Iron Hex knowing I won’t carry forward in this series. The characters became flatter (when they should get bulkier) as time went by for me and the plot is just not that unique enough. I highly recommend passing this one by and instead picking up Andrea Stewart’s Bone Shard Daughter trilogy. It feels somewhat similar, but in that series the romance is taut, the magic is costly, and the politics don’t feel borrowed from my junior high textbook.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
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My rating: 2 of 5 stars
This should have been a YA/Teen novel. Then it might have stood a chance or at least the prose feeling juvenile could be explained.
The overall plot, for me, felt is all a bit too parallel to major moments in our history. Something I rarely complain about; but on reflection maybe it’s just because it’s written in an obvious vernacular(?). Walsh combines a princess everyone thinks is dead (Russia’sAnastasia) during a take-over from a charismatic leader who (seemingly) speaks for the people by putting all their woes on one group of people, the witches. (Nazi Germany). None of these ideas are unique and many have been reused dozens of times; but here it just felt less cohesive and more like the plot points were stolen and dropped into a story just to be there.
For me,it’s a sad reality, that Walsh shows she is a debut writer. All you’d need to do to make this a YA book is take out 6 pages of awkward, poorly written sex. It was like someone told Walsh ‘thou shalt add a sex scene’ and so she did. The scene lacks any true tension, passion, and desire. It also lacked genuine check-ins or moments of concern for one another. Walsh tried to hit these but somehow they felt manufactured and not fluid for me. Thus, The Iron Hex fell flat for me and by the end I realized I just didn’t care about the cliffhanger or any of the characters.
It doesn’t help that I predicted every single one of the reveals. The first two, we get midway through the story, are very obvious, so I barely consider them reveals. A novel is a bit of a locked room mystery; you only have as many possible outcomes or people to blame as you have introduced (unless you have a cheap ending which is worse!). Therefore your reveals need to be clever, and I think one of them could have been if there had been a bit more backstory on a couple of characters. What is important is, in the end, everything has to come together in a good fantasy novel and it just doesn’t here.
When you are writing and being shelved next to the likes of Sanderson, Yarros, Stewart, Gwynne, and more the bar is high and so your quality needs to be at a higher level as well. Maybe that’s not totally fair, but the reality is that to be classified in the Romantasy adult genre these days, there’s competition abound. Whereas, over in teen, you can survive a few juvenile moments because it’s understood that your story needs to remain ‘cleaner’ (if you will) and maybe your prose can be at a level that doesn’t require the polish and lyricism I love in a good fantasy novel. That’s not to say YA can’t be amazing, as it can; it’s just to say that the genre affords a couple of compromises that could have benefited Walsh.
I’m stepping away from The Iron Hex knowing I won’t carry forward in this series. The characters became flatter (when they should get bulkier) as time went by for me and the plot is just not that unique enough. I highly recommend passing this one by and instead picking up Andrea Stewart’s Bone Shard Daughter trilogy. It feels somewhat similar, but in that series the romance is taut, the magic is costly, and the politics don’t feel borrowed from my junior high textbook.
Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.
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