Review Detail

Reader reviewed by Lisa the Nerd

in a sentence or so: Kaye and
her mom move back in with her grandma in Jersey after her mom's latest
attempt to be a rockstar doesn't turn out so well. it is when she moves
back to the small town of her childhood that she starts to feel faeries
on the edge of her existence. she is sure that the world of real life
and magic are merging into one when she finds an elf (a pretty handsome
one at that) dying in the woods.

Kaye's mom has been the lead
singer in many a rock band. this means that Kaye has led a pretty
nomadic life and seen her fair share of bizarre, unpleasant, and
morally questionable things. but through it all, Kaye has always felt
loved and encouraged by her mother. which is not always the case with
her best friend in Jersey, Janet. Janet and Kaye go back to the days of
elementary school, and so when Kaye returns to Jersey as a sixteen year
old, Janet remembers her friend's knack for making up imaginary
friends/creatures and seeing things that no one else can see. well,
apparently that knack is still with her.

Kaye stumbles upon
Roiben, a wounded elf, in the woods. through her help, he is able to
stumble back home to his home, the Unseelie court. Kaye is being told
by her childhood faerie friends that this handsome elf means to do her
harm...something she has a hard time believing. what she can believe is
the fact that she is starting to feel strange things happening to her
and around her, and that her life is not at all what she thought it to
be.

i had a tough time working my way into this book. i think
part of that is because this is the first faerie book i've read, so
maybe the names and mythology were supposed to be assumed knowledge of
the reader and i just didn't have that assumed knowledge. i felt like
the framework was established quickly and loosely, and it wasn't until
about a hundred pages in that i felt comfortable with the story, the
characters, and the direction. it finished strong, so i ended up really
enjoying the read.

all of the characters are SERIOUSLY flawed,
which is something i dig. they are also seriously humanistic, which is
something else i dig. you get why people (faeries, queens, pixies,
etc.) act and think the way they do. at times i felt like this wasn't a
great read, but overall i enjoyed it more than i expected. after i was
hooked into the plot, i was really hooked. i am genuinely interested to
read the further adventures of the characters in Ironside.

there
are twists and turns a plenty, laugh out loud moments, vivid
descriptions of what the faerie realm is like, and the title of the
book is the anchor of the plot - which i will not get into because
that's a bit spoiler-y. i'd recommend this to fantasy genre junkies
like myself for sure.

fave quote: "She
smiled ruefully. 'But they never told me. They knew all this time, and
nothing - not one hint.'' Kaye looked pensively at the joints of her
fingers. Why should one extra joint make them horrifying? It did,
though - flexing them bothered her." (119)

fix er up: more explanation on the background of the creatures and the plot development.