55. Ironside: A Modern Faery’s Tale by Holly Black (Fantasy) 323 p.

I was going to wait for this to come out in trade paperback to buy it, but I was out looking for Orson Scott Card’s Xenocide last night, and stumbled across a used hardcover copy. It reeks of incense, not surprising if you know Seeker’s Books, the store where I found it, but it didn’t bother me once I got used to it. Better incense fumes than cigarette smoke.

Anyway. Ironside is the direct sequel to Tithe, but also stars one of the characters from Valiant. If you plan to read the series, you probably shouldn’t read this review, because it will inevitably contain spoilers for those first two books. Okay? Okay!

As usual, I found myself a little dragged down by the darkness of the atmosphere at the beginning. And just like the first two books, the story soon drew me in and made me forget why I’d ever been bothered by it. In this book, Kaye is still living with her grandmother in New Jersey, although her mother has an apartment in New York. At Roiben’s coronation, Kaye is goaded into making a declaration of her feelings for him, and is rewarded with an impossible quest: find a faery who can tell and untruth. Until she fulfils the quest, she cannot see Roiben again.

Meanwhile, Queen Silarial of the Bright Court is determined to gain control of the Unseelie throne, but is hampered Roiben’s hatred of her. Kaye and Cornelius do their best to help him, but they each have problems of their own to deal with.

I actually liked this the best of the series so far, although I can’t put my finger on the exact reason. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting more used to Black’s depiction of the faerie courts, so I feel like I have a better grasp of what’s going on. Or maybe the story she’s telling in Ironside just appeals to me more. I loved the shout-out to Emma Bull early in the novel, since the series clearly owes a great deal to War for the Oaks, even though there’s a lot that makes it unique. And as always, Black does a fantastic job of making faeries alien and strange in believable ways.

I really hope Holly Black will write more about these characters, although I’ve heard this will likely be the last book.

Pages read: 15,136

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, Holly Black, Modern Faerie Tale, Once Upon a Time II