What's It Like Being A Monkey?
I don’t know, what’s it like being a human?
Alas, since the weather was 10 kinds of hell on Sunday (with tornado warnings!), Bear and I were unable to jump. Again. However, I did relish the time off to rest my shoulder, but more than that, it was unexpectedly nice to hang out with my Teddy Bear and not do a thing. Nearly every time we’ve seen each other in the past year, he’s either been studying while I’ve been writing or else we’re jumping, jumping, jumping out of planes or driving 18 hours to North Carolina and back to hone our skydiving skills in a wind tunnel.
Sunday we went to the mall as Bear needed to buy a new charger for his MacBook. We also made a stop by Barnes & Noble as he needed some review books for the boards. I took the opportunity to spend the rest of my birthday giftcard.
Books Purchased
- BEYOND HEAVING BOSOMS by Sarah Wendell & Candy Tan (a.k.a. Smart Bitches Who Read Trashy Books)
- 13 LITTLE BLUE ENVELOPES by Maureen Johnson
- IRONSIDE by Holly Black
- HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE by Diana Wynne Jones
- SHIVER by Maggie Stiefvater
I read IRONSIDE while lounging about with a lazy Bear and a lazy White-Harp. I first read TITHE while on holiday last year, of which IRONSIDE is the direct sequel. In this “modern faery tale” universe, I actually read VALIANT first, which is a companion book to TITHE and IRONSIDE.
Review of IRONSIDE by Holly Black
IRONSIDE by Holly Black
It was a slight disservice to have read VALIANT first. Not because it’s technically second chronologically, but because I liked it so much more than either TITHE or IRONSIDE. There are a few reasons, but the primary reason comes down to this simple comparison:
Beauty and the Beast > Tam Lin
As far as retellings of fairy tales go. Neither are as faithful to the original tale as say, anything by Robin McKinley, but I loved VALIANT because it’s based on Beauty and the Beast.
The other reason I liked TITHE and IRONSIDE less has to do with my aversion to faeries. Or rather, my aversion to faery protagonists and faery love interests. This dovetails into my dislike of paranormal/supernatural romances in general; I like reading about people. And specifically human people. Although VALIANT is set in the same world as TITHE and IRONSIDE, it’s about humans and runaways and drug addiction and all sorts of powerful themes.
TITHE and IRONSIDE revolve around two fey: Kaye, a changeling pixie who was switched with a human girl when they were both very young, and Roiben, a former knight of the Seelie Court. In TITHE, Kaye saves the life of a preternaturally beautiful faery knight and discovers she’s not human. IRONSIDE follows what happens next.
Roiben is now Lord of the Unseelie following the events of TITHE. On the night of his coronation, Kaye is tricked by some of the other fey into a declaration of love. A declaration of love is a serious matter in faery culture: the declarer is given a quest or a task and upon its successful completion, becomes the consort of the Lord/Lady of the Un/Seelie Court. Roiben gives Kaye an impossible task: to find a faery who can lie. (Faeries can only speak the truth.)
Dismayed by his rebuff, Kaye returns to the human world to confront her mother about her true changeling nature. Ellen takes this badly, but Kaye vows to restore her rightful daughter to her. Kaye, her friend Corny, and Luis from VALIANT are caught up in the impending war between the Bright and Dark Courts as Kaye tries to complete her impossible quest, restore the real Kaye Fierch, and come to terms with who she really is.
IRONSIDE is difficult to summarise as it’s rather complex. There are themes about family, about identity, about loyalty and love, etc. that are simply too convoluted to talk about coherently. I did like this better than TITHE, mostly because it seemed more sophisticated, and because Kaye’s struggle with finding her place is exquisitely rendered. She is, as she says, “Neither fish nor fowl.” She’s a pixie who grew up thinking she was human, she doesn’t belong to any faery court, and she’s fairly ignorant of faery customs. However, it’s her scenes with her mother Ellen that are especially poignant, especially when Ellen affirms that Kaye is still her daughter, despite the fact that she’s not human.
All in all, pretty good. My biggest gripes have more to do with personal preference than anything else. Recommended.
