If you will recall, I was so excited for this book that I began reading it immediately after I finished The Iron King, which was a great book. Sadly The Iron Daughter did not live up to its predecessor.
I blame Meghan Chase...and her incessant whining about Ash. I have read quite a few YA titles recently that involved a love story...The Vespertine, The Body in the Tower, The Big Crunch, but only in this one does the heroine obsess so completely over the boy. Meghan was practically worthless as a heroine because she spent all her time either moping about wondering why Ash was acting the way he was or running around making ridiculous decisions based entirely on her feelings for Ash and not on what was best to fulfill the need to find the scepter. And while I can appreciate that selfishness and single-mindedness are often characteristics of teens in love, she did not act this way in the first book. If Meghan were moony and sappy then I could have accepted her behavior in this book, (though if she were moony and sappy I probably would have stopped after the first one), but it just seemed out of character and annoying when I was hoping for the strong-willed Meghan to come back and kick some faery ass.
As anticipated, The Iron Queen arrived just before I finished The Iron Daughter, and while I do still intend to read it, I have put it down the pile a bit. Sad, but I cannot go back so soon after being so tragically disappointed.
