Blood and Iron

The back-of-book description is what hooked me. Then I was lucky enough to start reading.

My reading was fitful, lopped into three parts due to the eye-burning above-mentioned shifts. During the first third, the novel reached out and grabbed me. The writing is fantastic, the characters are engaging and I was taken to new places. 'Taken' because I wasn't expecting it, to be so completely engrossed and absorbed in a place that was immediately real. I reluctantly put the book down because, yanno, work.

During the second third is when I realized this was an epic, in every best sense of the word. Beyond the usual, beyond the ordinary, sweeping and diverse. The characters are flawed in the way that makes them seem like people you would actually show more meet. It makes you root for them, against them and want to know just what the hell will happen next.

Which is why, during the last third, I threatened bodily harm to anyone who might interrupt me when I was reading. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration. I shut off my phone and made sure that no one was around to interrupt me. But my fingers itched to get at it pretty much as soon as I had set it down. That counts, right?

It's an incredible work, vast and full. It's about love and loss; choices and consequences; success and failure; being broken and what you do that breaks others. Even better- it's about responsibility, about what you want and what you're willing to do for it. There aren't any 'good' or 'bad' sides, it's an exploration of all the shades of gray, wrapped in reworkings of every awesome fairy legend I've read. It's dark, it's hopeful, it's honest, it is...epic. I chuckled, I smiled and I wept. It's an amazing novel and the best thing I've read in fantasy for quite some time. I can't wait for more. show less

I think the first thing to understand when talking about an Elizabeth Bear book is that it will not be a quick, easy read. Bear's work is complex and layered, and she doesn't do hand holding - as a reader, you take the plunge and spend a good deal of time trying to keep your head above water until you get your bearings in her world. Additionally, she doesn't really do the sympathetic protagonist, so feeling connected to her characters is often a challenge.

Blood and Iron tackles a wide range of fantasy tropes - faerie, and Arthurian legend, and werewolves, and Celtic folklore, and dragons, and....it's a lot. There are so many interesting ideas explored, but I'm not sure any of them is given the focus they deserve. There is also a power show more imbalance in the relationship between Seeker, our main character, and Whiskey, the kelpie she binds, that feels....somehow problematically racial, particularly in today's specific climate.

All that said, Elizabeth Bear is an excellent writer, and I was engaged and excited to read throughout the novel. There were just too many times I felt lost to be able to give this a fully ringing endorsement. Reading Bear's work always makes me feel like I should just be a little bit smarter, and maybe it would work out better for me. I do think I will read the sequel, however, so that's something. show less

I don't read a lot of the urban fantasy in general, and faerie interfacing the modern world in particular. I really like Emma Bull's stuff, and really don't like Lackey and confederates in their treatment of it. I read this book for a discussion group. Nonetheless, I thought it was quite well written. In fact, there were spots where the elegance of the descriptive prose stopped me in my tracks--a "well-turned phrase". The characters were interesting and, given they were drawn from very familiar archetypes, handled in an original manner. I had read some of Bear's SF (e.g., [Hammered] and was frankly surprised and impressed with the way she handled this very different genre.

I haven't been able to chose a favourite book since I was about seven, but this, HANDS DOWN, is my favourite. The writing is breathtakingly beautiful. The characters are alien and sometimes (literally) soulless but still sympathetic and tragic. The plot is so complicated and layered that a quarter of my way into the first reading I decided that I was going to have to re-read it. Elizabeth Bear rips into the traditional literary ideas regarding faeries, Faerieland, and magic and rends it limb from limb. The end result is bloody but breathtaking, like watching a tiger hunt.

Which is overly dramatic, yes. But this book is just--beyond fantastic. Go read it.

Matthew is a magician in New York City, a member of the Prometheans, who works to protect humans from the Fae that would steal them into their world as changelings. Elaine is a human bound to the Faerie world by the Mebd, one of the Queens of Faerie, and by her loyalty to her son, Ian. She is also the Seeker, one who prowls shadows looking for Fae children. A collision of their worlds seems inevitable, but as players are drawn into events beyond their control the morality of either side becomes ambiguous.

This urban fantasy is a bit different from my normal fare -- darker, more sensual than the fantasy I usually choose to read. I kept going because I wanted to see what would happen to Elaine and the other characters, if their fates were show more truly predetermined or if they could choose a different outcome. Bear throws readers into her alternate universe and leaves them to discover along with her characters (a knowledge of Arthurian legend and the ballad of Tam Lin would be especially helpful). I'm interested in seeing where the series heads from here. show less

It’s a slow ride that is quietly demanding. Bear makes no allowances for her reader’s familiarity with faerie tales or Irish pronunciation, weaving the implicit weight of her chosen myths into her own sharp tale of the war between Faerie and Man. If you don’t know what you’re missing, I suspect there’s plenty here that comes as a surprise or that seems a bit sketchy; if you have long loved Irish myth and the Matter of Britain, you probably get a good deal more out of it.

This is a dark, complex tale of bright bells, brave banners, high magic and bloody betrayals. Bear has done a fine job of sketching the Fae as I’ve always seen them - heartless, soulless and captivating - and understands that the differences between the show more Seelie and the Unseelie are little more than split hairs if you’re a mere human. Nonetheless, she deftly wins you to the Faerie cause as her human Magi declare war, merciless in her conviction that no side is any better than another.

There were the odd points that raised my hackles (mostly from the werewolves, who I took exception to for most of the same reasons as Elaine, and who felt the least incorporated of all the myths in the weft) but overall this is a fine if occasionally stodgy read. My main beef was with the Kindle formatting, which didn't show breaks in points of view. I suspect these have multiple line breaks in the printed edition - in Kindle, the paragraphs merge together, having suddenly changed time, location and perspective, which kept me on my toes and made it tricky to find handy stopping points!

If you don’t like faeries and Arthurian myth, avoid like the plague. If you do, this is another strong addition with a bittersweet lilt familiar to any reader of GGK. show less

First of all, I'll start out by saying that I'm not a fan of urban fantasy... it's just not my thing, and so I wasn't sure if I'd like this book. I actually bought it because I started reading the author's blog a few months ago--referred over by links that would appear from time on other blogs I read regularly--and I enjoyed Bear's awesome combination of wit and sarcasm mellowed by an ability to not take herself too seriously.

And so I knew I wanted to read something of hers, and since I don't read SF much anymore, I checked out the excerpts on her website from the newest in her Promethean Age series, Ink and Steel, and they hooked me. Granted, that book is a prequel of sorts, set in Elizabethan England as well as Faerie, and Blood and show more Iron is set in modern-day New York City... as well as Faerie.

I enjoyed this book immensely, finding the urban setting (of only part of the story) natural and not at all forced into a glamourie of sorts, the sense I sometimes got whenever I tried to read other urban fantasy. Bear creates such great characterizations, wrapped up with all the subtleties of complex relationships and motives and connections that aren't always immediately apparent. Even when the characters think they've figured it all out, there remains a twist or turn that brings about a whole new revelation, to us and to them.

I looked at a few of the other reviews before writing this, and I was surprised to see those that said things like, "I TRIED to like this book, but..." and was just flabbergasted. How could anyone NOT love this book??? But readers all have different tastes, which I think is a great thing. How boring would it be if we all like the same things, even when we WANT people to love what we love? This is not a book for a reader who likes breakneck adventure and a plot that speeds headlong into a crashing conclusion. Bear's pacing is deliberate (not at all "slow"), and carefully allows just enough time for our main characters to interact and grow and learn and realize their potential, which in most cases is nothing at all that they (or the reader) expected. I'm looking forward to the rest of this series with great relish! show less