A review by cimorene1558
Iron Hearted Violet by Kelly Barnhill

3.0

2.5 stars. Yet another middle-grade fantasy novel that doesn't live up to its potential. It's an interesting world, and to begin with, the characters seem decent enough, and the villain's first appearance is extremely promising, in that it's a rather spine-chillingly evil one. But it's all downhill from there. A lot of random and never quite connected things happen, things that feel like they ought to mean something but never quite do, and the characters end up two-dimensional and not very sympathetic (and frankly, kind of dumb).

And as for the illustrations, oh my goodness are they ever wrong. Princesses who are interesting and quirky looking with mis-matched eyes are not best drawn in Manga style, which is what's happened here.