Review: The Iron Trial

The Iron Trial by Cassandra Clare

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



Okay, first things first: yes, there are a lot of similarities to Harry Potter. It's a book about going to a magic school, and there's a villain. OF COURSE it's similar to Harry Potter. However, JK Rowling was not the first author to write about a magic school, and she won't be the last. I believe it's important to put that aside and let the story from Holly Black & Cassandra Clare take its own course. THEN you can decide if you hate it. I urge you not to pre-judge!

To me, it was like an inverted Harry Potter. Maybe a next step - it's even darker just by the nature of the plot twists that happen. (And it's harder to get darker than Harry Potter!) It also draws on all the classic fantasy aspects - you can see the Lord of the Rings influence, I can even see a Mercedes Lackey influence in the way that it reads - but none of this means that the story steals from them and becomes a carbon copy of them. I also love the reintroduction of the mage aspect - it's been a while since I've read something involving mages that isn't based in historical fiction, though I don't read a TON of young adult fantasy. I think it was done well, however.

The characters are developed; you get a healthy curiosity about them because you're given JUST enough backstory to want to know more, but not all of it. Tamara especially fascinates me, because there is definitely something in her background but we don't get to find out that much about it. The characters also change - Callum's path is, of course, one of the most interesting, but I feel like Aaron will also get a lot more attention as the series goes on, and he doesn't stay the same flat character the whole time in this book. (I also like Callum's development because he goes from angst filled and angry to happy to other things. And YES, he does remind me of Harry, but with even better character development and a darker story.)

Parts of the novel did read a little slowly, and there was a lot of world building that sometimes took away from the plot. (A little too much exposition.) It is a complicated world they're trying to build, with a lot more history than is normal in most books, and I think this was really a set up book for the rest of the series, but both Holly Black and Cassandra Clare are pretty funny people, so there's a lot of lightness in the darkness.

I did enjoy it, and maybe my head wasn't in the right place (or I'm not one of those people who always have to say they saw plot twists coming!) but I certainly didn't see the twist. I knew something was up (no spoilers here, I've decided) but I didn't see it. It's definitely one of the ways I'd recommend this book, that plot twist. And you can always use the Harry Potter similarities as a way to recommend it, because it's like an even darker version, and as said, the next step from Harry Potter. It's similar, but it's even more intense and there's so many ways for it to go, and the backstory is just as tragic. I find it interesting, and also found that I read it in about one day overall, minus breaks I took to go to work.

And yes, it's technically 9-12, but so is Harry Potter - I'm a firm believer in the fact that YA and 9-12 fiction can be read by ANYONE. Don't get me started on that.

I've seen a lot of bad reviews for this book, and though I agree with some of those reasons - the worldbuilding is too much, exposition, slowness, etc - I do not agree with calling it bad because of the Harry Potter parallels. There was no way to avoid that, as Harry Potter exploded over the world stage, but I think, in time, Black & Clare will be able to make it their own. (Their writing voices are different!) I also see a lot of other classic influences that no one is commenting on in a negative way. I think they're doing a great job, and it's not like they don't know that people are going to be comparing the two endlessly. I think they've already made it their own with the plot twist. I will recommend it to people who enjoyed Harry Potter and a classic fantasy feel mixed with modern funny parts. (Though I definitely know that not everyone will agree there, and that's fine - just make sure you don't pre-judge this book because of the HP similarities!)



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Review: Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire

Georgiana: Duchess of Devonshire by Amanda Foreman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This book was probably the hardest history book I have had to get through - not including some Canadian history textbooks - and I'm still unsure as to the absolutely exact reason why. I think it may have been the writing style; at the same time as it was very, VERY dry and very textbook (and you know something's dry when they're talking about sexual scandal in what feels like a monotone voice), there were also many, many typos and run-on sentences that really bothered me. I just felt there were better ways to construct sentences, and I don't know if it was meant to be a stylistic choice - as the writing at the time, such as the writing that Georgiana composed herself, wasn't in keeping with modern grammar rules - or if there were just a lot of unfinished thoughts. Foreman also seemed, to me, to be a contradictory writer. She seemed to go from judging Georgiana very harshly to lifting her up onto a pedestal. The end of the book had this happen very intensely, when Foreman talked about how we cannot apply modern heterosexual or homosexual ideas to these eighteenth century relationships - yet the main focus of your book WAS applying those ideas to those relationships. (At least that's what seemed to be happening for the majority of the book for me; that and talking about how women shouldn't have gone near politics, yet applauding Georgiana for standing out, and then judging her again for retreating after she was shamed for it repeatedly.) There seemed to be a lot of flipping back and forth, and Foreman didn't seem to make a real decision on how she viewed Georgiana.

There was one lucid observation that was interesting to me: "The propensity of women's historians to ignore high politics, and of political historians to ignore women, has resulted in a profound misunderstanding of one of the most sexually integrated periods of British history." I really loved this, because it is really true. I haven't delved as deeply into women's history as I would like - in university history courses, you tend to focus on more well known accounts, and I never did get to take a really good gender in history course - but I feel, from what I've read, that this is true. Despite women in politics being a real thing - just because they didn't sit in the House did not mean they weren't present and working harder than the men in Parliament - it's rarely discussed, and I thought that was a great point to include. I do just wish she had been as decisive about the rest of her views on the rest of Georgiana's relationships. I think there's more to Georgiana's life than I learned here - since the majority focused on her life as it related to men and really painted her as completely idiotic with money and then occasionally painted her as a heroine in politics, which was very confusing - and though I didn't entirely enjoy this, I think I'll be seeking more information elsewhere.



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