Product Description

In the realm of Faerie, the time has come for Roiben's coronation. Uneasy in the midst of the malevolent Unseelie Court, pixie Kaye is sure of only one thing -- her love for Roiben. But when Kaye, drunk on faerie wine, declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye can't see or speak to Roiben unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn't exist: a faerie who can tell a lie.

Miserable and convinced she belongs nowhere, Kaye decides to tell her mother the truth -- that she is a changeling left in place of the human daughter stolen long ago. Her mother's shock and horror sends Kaye back to the world of Faerie to find her human counterpart and return her to Ironside. But once back in the faerie courts, Kaye finds herself a pawn in the games of Silarial, queen of the Seelie Court. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she will use Kaye, and any means necessary, to get it. In this game of wits and weapons, can a pixie outplay a queen?

Holly Black spins a seductive tale at once achingly real and chillingly enchanted, set in a dangerous world where pleasure mingles with pain and nothing is exactly as it appears.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51727 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9780689868207
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

From Booklist
Finding your place in the world is no picnic at the best of times, but pixie changeling Kaye finds it tougher than most. And no wonder: her boyfriend has been crowned king of the Unseelie Court and her best friend suffers from a faery's curse. In this follow-up to Black's previous two books about the urban fey, Kaye and her gay friend Corny (from Tithe, 2003) meet brothers Luis and Dave (from Valiant, 2005), and the teens are caught in the middle of a clash between the rival faery courts. As characters struggle to shape their identities, quintessential coming-of-age themes are as skillfully interwoven as in the earlier adventures, as are seductive contradictions: faeries who cannot lie nonetheless find ways to connive and betray, loyalty and love are wielded as weapons, and ethereal beauty often masks cruelty of the ugliest sort. The chilling game of wits culminates in a satisfying conclusion to this dark, edgy fantasy, a must-purchase for Black's many devoted fans. Rutan, Lynn
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

About the Author
Holly Black spent her early years in a decaying Victorian mansion where her mother fed her a steady diet of ghost stories and books about faeries. Her first book, Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, was an ALA Top Ten Book for Teens, received starred reviews in Publishers Weekly and Kirkus Reviews, and has been translated into twelve languages. Her second teen novel, Valiant, was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Locus Magazine Recommended Read, and a recipient of the Andre Norton Award from the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Visit Holly at www.hollyblack.com.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter One

I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape -- the loneliness of it -- the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it -- the whole story doesn't show.

-- ANDREW WYETH

Human girls cry when they're sad and laugh when they're happy. They have a single fixed shape rather than shifting with their whims like windblown smoke. They have their very own parents, whom they love. They don't go around stealing other girls' mothers. At least that's what Kaye thought human girls were like. She wouldn't really know. After all, she wasn't human.

Fingering the hole on the left side of her fishnets, Kaye poked at the green skin underneath as she considered herself in the mirror.

"Your rat wants to come," Lutie-loo said. Kaye turned toward the lidded fish tank, where the doll-size faery had her thin, pale fingers pressed against the outside of the glass. Inside, Kaye's brown rat, Armageddon, sniffed the air. Isaac was curled in a white ball in the far corner. "He likes coronations."

"Can you really understand what he's saying?" Kaye asked, pulling an olive skirt over her head and wriggling it onto her hips.

"He's just a rat," Lutie said, turning toward Kaye. One of her moth wings dusted the side of the cage with pale powder. "Anyone can talk rat."

"Well, I can't. Do I look monochromatic in this?"

Lutie nodded. "I like it."

Kaye heard her grandmother's voice calling from downstairs. "Where are you? I made you a sandwich!"

"Be there in a second!" Kaye shouted back.

Lutie kissed the glass wall of the cage. "Well, can the rat come or not?"

"I guess. Sure. I mean, if you can get him to not run away." Kaye laced up one thick-soled black boot and limped around the room looking for its mate. Only two months ago her bedroom had featured a child's bed and a bookshelf of ancient, unblinking dolls. Now the old bed was in pieces in the attic, the dolls were dressed in punk-rock finery, and above the mattress on the floor Kaye had painted a mural where a headboard might have been. It was half finished -- a tree with deep, intricate roots and gilded bark. Although she'd thought it would, the decorating still hadn't made the room feel like hers.

When he'd seen the mural, Roiben had remarked that she could glamour the room into looking any way she wanted, but a magical veneer -- no matter how lovely -- still didn't seem real to her. Or maybe it seemed too real, too much a reminder of why she didn't belong in the room at all.

Shoving her foot into the other boot, she tugged on her jacket. Leaving her hair green, she let magic slide over her skin, coloring and plumping it. There was a slight prickling as the glamour restored her familiar human face.

She looked at herself a moment longer before pocketing Armageddon, scratching behind the ears of Isaac, and walking toward the door. Lutie followed, flying on moth wings, keeping out of sight as Kaye jogged down the stairs.

"Was that your mother on the phone before?" Kaye's grandmother asked. "I heard it ring." She stood at the kitchen counter, pouring hot grease into a tin can. Two peanut butter and bacon sandwiches sat on chipped plates; Kaye could see the brown meat curling past the edges of the white bread.

Kaye bit into her sandwich, glad that the peanut butter glued her mouth shut.

"I left her a message about the holidays, but can she bother to call me back? Oh no, she's much too busy to talk to me. You'll have to ask her tomorrow night, although why she can't come down here to see you instead of insisting you go visit her at that squalid apartment in the city, I will never know. It must really gall her that you've decided to stay here instead of following her around like a little shadow."

Kaye chewed, nodding along with her grandmother's complaints. In the mirror beside the back door, she could see, beneath the glamour, a girl with leaf green skin, black eyes without a drop of white in them, and wings as thin as plastic wrap. A monster standing beside a nice old lady, eating food intended for another child. A child stolen away by faeries.

Brood parasites. That's what cuckoos were called when they dropped their eggs in other birds' nests. Parasitic bees, too, leaving their spawn in foreign hives; Kaye had read about them in one of the moldering encyclopedias on the landing. Brood parasites didn't bother raising their own babies. They left them to be raised by others -- birds that tried not to notice when their offspring grew huge and hungry, bees that ignored that their progeny did not collect pollen, mothers and grandmothers who didn't know the word "changeling."

"I have to go," Kaye said suddenly.

"Have you thought more about school?"

"Gram, I got my GED," Kaye said. "You saw it. I did it. I'm done."

Her grandmother sighed and looked toward the fridge, where the letter was still tacked with a magnet. "There's always community college. Imagine that -- starting college before the rest of your class even graduates."

"I'll go see if Corny is outside yet." Kaye started toward the door. "Thanks for the sandwich."

The old woman shook her head. "It's too cold out there. Stand on the porch. He should know better than to ask a young girl to wait outside in the snow. I swear, that boy has no manners at all."

Kaye felt the whoosh of air as Lutie flew past her back. Her grandmother didn't even look up. "Okay, Gram. Bye, Gram."

"Stay warm."

Kaye nodded and used the sleeve of her coat to turn the knob of the door so that she could avoid touching the iron. Even the smell of it burned her nose when she got close. Walking through the porch, she used the same trick on the screen door and stepped out into the snow. The trees on the lawn were encased in ice. Hail from that morning had stuck to whatever it had touched, freezing into solid sparkling skins that covered branches and flashed against the dull gray sky. The slightest breeze sent the limbs jangling against one another.

Corny wasn't coming, but her grandmother didn't need to know that. It wasn't lying. After all, faeries couldn't lie. They only bent the truth so far that it snapped on its own.

Above the doorway, a swag of thorn wrapped in green marked the house as watched over by the Unseelie Court. A gift from Roiben. Each time Kaye looked at the branches, she hoped that being protected by the Unseelie Court included being protected from the Unseelie Court.

She turned away, walking past a ranch house with aluminum siding hanging off in patches. The woman who lived there raised Italian ducks that ate all the grass seed anyone in the neighborhood planted. Kaye thought of the ducks and smiled. A trash can rolled in the street, bumping up against plastic bins of beer bottles set out for recycling. Kaye crossed over the parking lot of a boarded-up bowling alley, where a sofa rested near the curb, cushions hard with frost.

Plastic Santas glowed on lawns beside dried grapevine reindeer wrapped with fiber-optic lights. A twenty-four-hour convenience store piped screechy carols that carried through the quiet streets. A robotic elf with rosy cheeks waved endlessly next to several snowman windsocks fluttering like ghosts. Kaye passed a manger missing its baby Jesus. She wondered if kids had stolen him or if the family had just taken him in for the night.

Halfway to the cemetery, she stopped at a pay phone outside a pizza place, put in quarters, and punched in Corny's cell number. He picked it up after the first ring.

"Hey," Kaye said. "Did you decide about the coronation? I'm on my way to see Roiben before it starts."

"I don't think I can go," Corny said. "I'm glad you called, though -- I have to tell you something. I was driving past one of those storage places. You know the kind with the billboards that have quotes on them like 'Support Our Troops' or 'What Is Missing in C-H-blank-blank-C-H? U-R.'"

"Yeah," Kaye said, puzzled.

"Well, this one said 'Life Is Like Licking Honey from a Thorn.' What the fuck is that?"

"Weird."

"No shit, it's weird. What is it supposed to mean?"

"Nothing. Just don't dwell on it," Kaye said.

"Oh, right. Don't dwell. That's me. I'm so good at not dwelling. It's my skill set. If I was going to take one of those tests to see what job I was best suited for, I would rate a perfect ten for 'not dwelling on shit.' And what job do you think that would qualify me for exactly?"

"Storage unit manager," Kaye said. "You'd be the one to put up those sayings."

"Ouch. Right between the legs." She could hear the smile in his voice.

"So, you're really not coming tonight? You seemed so sure it was a good idea for you to face your fears and all that."

There was a long silence on the other end of the line. Just as she would have spoken, he said, "The problem with facing my fears is that they're my fears. Not to mention that a fear of megalomaniacal, amoral fiends is hard to rationalize away." He laughed, a brittle, strange cackle. "Just once I'd like them to finally give up their secrets -- tell me how to really protect myself. How to be safe."

Kaye thought of Nephamael, the last King of the Unseelie Court, choking on iron, and Corny stabbing him again and again.

"I don't think it's that simple," Kaye said. "I mean, it's almost impossible to protect yourself from people, forget faeries."

"Yeah, I guess. I'll see you tomorrow," Corny said.

"Okay." She heard him hang up the phone.

Kaye walked on, drawing her coat more tightly around her. She stepped into the cemetery and started up the snowy hill, muddy and grooved by the sleds that had gone over it. Her gaze strayed to where she knew Janet was buried, although from where Kaye stood, the polished granite stones looked the same with their plastic garlands and wet red bows. She didn't need to see the grave for her steps to slow, weighed down by the memory like sodden clothes must have weighed down Janet's drowning body.

She wondered what happened when the baby cuckoo realized it wasn't like its brothers and sisters. Maybe it wondered where it had come from or what it was. Maybe it just pretended nothi...

Customer Reviews

Courtesy of Teens Read Too
I have been looking forward to this book ever since I finished Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale, and Holly Black most definitely does not disappoint. IRONSIDE picks up soon after the events in Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale and Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, and takes the reader on another breathless journey into the amazing and deadly world of Faerie.

Things have been uneasy ever since Roiben assumed the throne of the Unseelie Court, and with the threat of war in the air and Roiben's coronation drawing near, everyone is on edge. Changeling Kaye Fierch knows that she loves Roiben, but she feels increasingly unwelcome and out of place in the Unseelie Court. So the night of the coronation, determined to prove herself to Roiben and the rest of the court, she makes a formal declaration and pledges herself to him as his consort. However, faerie custom demands that a quest be undertaken before anyone can sit as the Lord's consort, and Roiben grants Kaye an impossible task: to find a fairy who can tell an untruth. Now she is forbidden from seeing or speaking to him until she completes something she knows cannot be done.

Kaye doesn't know where to go, because she has been feeling uncomfortable at home as well, knowing that she stole a human child's life. In a moment of desperation, she tells her mother the truth: that she is a changeling that was switched with Ellen's real daughter, the real Kaye, and she vows to retrieve her from the Seelie Court and return her to Ellen. She feels that this, at least, is something she can do, even if there's no way she can complete Roiben's quest.

But with all the tension between the courts there is nowhere safe, and in venturing into the Seelie Court to find her human counterpart, Kaye puts herself within reach of Lady Silarial. Silarial wants Roiben's throne, and she's willing to do anything, including using Kaye, to get it. Once again Kaye finds herself in the middle of Faerie politics, but this time Roiben's not there to save her, and she may not have a way out.

In my personal experience it is rare that a sequel ever lives up to the first book, but IRONSIDE does just that. Full of court rivalry, deception and betrayal, sword fights and murder, faerie curses, new romances, and even characters from Valiant: A Modern Tale of Faerie, IRONSIDE is another wonderful foray into the dark, gritty world of Faerie and will not leave readers disappointed. It will make you laugh, it will make you cry, it will make you pound your pillow in frustration and clap your hands in delight. My one and only complaint is that this is the last book set in this amazing world.

Reviewed by: Andie Z.

Enticing and delectable read for all ages!
I was sucked into this trilogy upon recommendation by several friends. I must admit, I was at first quite skeptical as to whether or not a teen faerie tale would appeal to me, but I decided to give the first book (Tithe) a shot anyway. After reading Tithe, I was hooked on the delectable world Black had created, and wanted to read further.

Valiant, in some ways, was very disappointing to me at first. For the end of Tithe left some loose ends dangling precariously. I wanted to know, as many readers did I'm sure, what happened to Kaye and Roiben after that tale ended. Rather than picking up where Tithe left off, Valiant begins another story set in the same time and the same world. While mentioning some of the characters from the previous book, Valiant really is in many ways a stand-alone novel. Though Valiant doesn't really satisfy in terms of picking up Kaye and Roiben's story, it is quite an excellent read in and of itself. The lack of continuity between the books left me a tad skeptical to read the third. Nonetheless, the tales were both so downright intriguing that I had to read the third.

With Ironside, Black does a wonderful job of telling another wonderful tale, bringing in several characters from both books, and tying up some loose ends. Kaye and Roiben are back and the tension between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts has grown. Kaye, being the punk changeling that she is (I mean that in a good way) has gotten herself into quite a mess that she's working on sorting out. Luis is working on keeping him and his brother safe in ironside after the events that took place in Valiant. The Seelie queen's true colors are shining through upon Roiben's coronation, in which he formally claimed the Unseelie throne. Overall Black's writing seems to have developed quite a bit between all three novels, and it really shows in this final book. The plot is, for lack of a better word, much tighter and very well-developed.

On the whole, it's difficult to not fall in love with the world and characters Black has created in her "Modern Tales of Faerie," and it's hard to not find something or someone in these tales to relate to, no matter your age. I highly recommend the entire trilogy to any fans of fantasy literature, or anyone looking for a light-hearted romp through a fun and mystical adventure world. I'd love to see the characters come back in yet another tale in the future!

Good .. but somthing was missing for me.
I liked this book, I did but honestly I thought I would like it more. not that I didn't enjoy it, hard not to like Holly's work really. It's just that I felt it didn' carry quite the same weight as the other two. It's possible that because I liked Valiant so much that going back to Kaye's story interesting as it was, was like backsliding a little. Another reviewer pointed out that perhaps the reason Ironside is a slight let down is because we don't find out why Kaye was switched in the first place. I thought of that while I was reading, but I came to the conclusion some where along the way that there was no real reason that Kaye was switched, at least in the Kaye is secretly someone uber special, who's destiny will alter Faerie forever kind of way. I think it had more to do with the fact that Chibi-Kaye (I love that) was exotic looking and as such would have atracted the notice of the Fey, like an unusual piece of art, they wanted to collect her. Of course that doesn't reall account for why The Brite Queen wanted her looked after, but the books don't say that that is an unusual thing, or maybe I missed it. After all such a big thing is made of Pixies being low born it just doesn't make sense the the Seelie Gentry would single Kaye out. another thing is, I would have liked to know Kaye's true name, though I can see why Kaye herself woudn't want to know it.

But mostly the thing I found odd was that Ironside seems to be an ending. If this is the end why write Valiant at all, yes there are cameos on all sides through the three books but it's still off. Unless Valiant's purpose was to introduce Luis and Dave, but if it was why have Val as the center of the story instead of Luis and Dave themselves. I don't know, Guess I'm hoping there will be more books. it would suck to have all these questions go unanswered. And because these are some seriously good reading.