Ironside by Holly BlackI am a fan of myth and fan­tasy. I am a huge fan of authors who can blend real­ity with that of the fan­tasy world together so skill­fully.  Iron­side: A Mod­ern Faery’s Tale, c2007 is the third book in Holly Black’s  Mod­ern Faery Tale series. The first book, Tithe, intro­duced us to this won­der­ful, vivid world where faerie’s are malev­o­lent crea­tures who steal mor­tal chil­dren and their moth­ers for their own dubi­ous pur­poses. They enjoy the spill of blood and use curses, enchant­ments and bar­gains to make humans do their bid­ding. In this world, mon­sters do exist.

Iron­side is a term that describes the mor­tal world as viewed by the fae. It is where most exiled fae live and call home. Exiled fae are bound to no court. Liv­ing “iron­side” presents all sorts of prob­lems for the fae. The iron that is built into every­thing is deadly to them. How­ever, most fae are able to sur­vive in Iron­side by using humans to help them blend into soci­ety using glam­our called Never More. The glam­our the fae use is highly addic­tive to humans who abuse it.

When Iron­side opens, two months have passed since Roiben won the Unseelie Court Crown. He is now Lord of the Night Court. The killing and the pain do not have the taste of sweet­ness to it like it used to for Roiben. He chooses to rule his court dif­fer­ently.  How­ever, as his coro­na­tion draws near, the threat of war is in the air. Roiben is find­ing his power to con­trol the soli­tary fae prob­lem­atic since the Tithe was botched.  Thus he sees no way to win this war with an army lack­ing in his court and with very lit­tle of the soli­tary fae under his control.

Silar­ial, The Bright Court Queen, was once loved by Roiben. However, she sent him to servi­tude to her sis­ter, Nicnevin, the Queen of the Unseelie Court. It’s a court that thrives on pain and vio­lence. Silar­ial sent Roiben to the Unseelie court as a sign of truce to her sister’s court.  Upon Nicnevin’s death, that truce ended.  Instead of giv­ing the Unseelie court to Silar­ial when the Tithe was botched, Roiben kept the crown for him­self. How­ever, Silar­ial wants to rule both courts and thus she sets out to bar­gain with Roiben. She uses every weak­ness she can find to get him to relin­quish con­trol of the Unseelie Court.

There are sev­eral sub­plots in Iron­side that the author decided to throw in that were just as  inter­est­ing as Roiben’s threat to the throne. Start­ing with Kaye, we learned in Tithe, that she wasnot human but a changeling. She decides to tell her mother the truth and offers to find her real daugh­ter. Then there’s her best friend, Corny, who sur­pris­ingly had a sig­nif­i­cant role in this story. He inad­ver­tently gets cursed by a faerie. So they must seek out a human with True Sight who can help Corny break the curse. Then there’s Luis and Dave, two broth­ers who were intro­duced in Valiant. Both have a bar­gain with the fae and are forced to work for them. It’s a long story and a sad one. A lit­tle of their back story is told here and is spoi­ler­ish if you haven’t read Valiant. Luis has a sav­ior com­plex: he’s always try­ing to save his baby brother from himself.  He’s  also skilled and most sought after in that he is able to help humans who have faerie prob­lems:he can break their curses and see through their glamour.

Of course there’s  the romance between Roiben and Kaye that made up about 20% of the book. There are some ten­der moments when they are together that makes up for the lit­tle time we get to spend with them. How­ever, they are apart for much of the book so be prepared. During the coro­na­tion cer­e­mony, Kaye drunk­enly declares her love for Roiben but he rebuffs her and sets her on a impos­si­ble task: to find a faerie that can tell an untruth.  Any con­sort who com­pletes the task is for­ever tied to the Lord of the Night Court. Kaye is also for­bid­den to see Roiben dur­ing this quest. Roiben has his rea­sons for keep­ing Kaye out of Faery Land. He wants to keep her from being used as a pawn in Silarial’s war.

Iron­side was not as good as Tithe to me. It doesn’t mean it was a bad book either. Ms. Black has a very vivid imag­i­na­tion. Her prose is very visual. She blends the every­day world with that of the fan­tas­tic very, very well. In this world, mon­sters exist while humans sleep com­fort­ably in their beds every night. What I didn’t like was the res­o­lu­tion to Kaye’s quest: I felt that it was just too convenient. Also the author left a few dan­gling threads unresolved. So does this mean that the author will revisit this world again? I cer­tainly hope so but I’m told that this is it.Iron­side is a dark and quick read. I’d say that a B+ best describes my level of enjoy­ment. Kudos to you, Ms. Black and good job for cre­at­ing such inter­est­ing char­ac­ters in a world of magic and suspense.

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