The Iron Knight

Switching the narrator was a brave choice, and it pays off. After three books told by Meghan, The Iron Knight belongs entirely to Ash, a quiet, guarded hero whose cool manners hide a long history of loss and guilt. The journey brings unexpected companions, including the legendary Wolf, and one painful surprise from his past: a girl he loved and lost long ago, now alive again and walking at his side.

Much of the novel is less about action than about memory and choice. Ash must face the things he has done, and the tests he meets on the road ask what it means to be human: to feel regret, to keep promises, to change. Puck's jokes lighten the mood, and the friendship between the two old rivals becomes one of the book's best threads. Some readers find the middle slow, but the final trials are inventive and genuinely moving.

It reads best after the first three books, and it gives the original story a fuller ending. Grimalkin, as always, steals every scene he appears in, usually while pretending not to care. About 400 pages in the Harlequin Teen paperback.