Hooray for a paranormal romance that doesn't suck! I was about ready to write the entire genre off as a lost cause.

I've been sampling quite a bit of paranormal romance, just to see if there is any out there that doesn't make me want to tear my hair out and I think I may have found one. Where "The Iron King" succeeded where so many others failed can be brought down to one thing: The characters FINALLY got out of high school! Instead of telling the reader that Meghan Chase is part fey, but leaving her to navigate the horrors of biology class and only giving up random glimpses of some tragically-dark-yet-sexy-love-interest that wants to eat her kidneys but can't for some reason (puh-lease), the narrative actually takes her into the Faery World (and all its associated terms and aliases) and we actually get to SEE faeries and supernatural creatures and HONEST TO GOODNESS DANGER AND ACTION!! (And there was great rejoicing in the land!) I think the best part of this story is Puck (Robin Goodfellow). While there are plenty of stuck-in-the-mud, selfish-piles-of-rat-droppings faeries, Puck is actually funny. He has a personality, he has his own objectives and he's really fun to read - nearly a perfect foil to Meghan. The romance was good too - not too much brooding or moping about between Ash and Meghan. It just sort of happened - but in a way that I accepted and liked. I hope the rest of the series was as enjoyable as the first book. I remain cautiously optimistic.

I refrained from giving it a full five stars because I want to see how this measures up to the rest of the series. I may change my mind about my rating, in which case I will come back and fix that.