Ironside

IRONSIDE by Holly Black
Category: Fantasy
Age Recommendation: Grades 9+
Release Date: 5/8/07
Publisher: Margaret K. McElderry
Reviewed by: Andie Z.
Rating: 5 Stars

I have been looking forward to this book ever since I finished TITHE, and Holly Black most definitely does not disappoint.
IRONSIDE picks up soon after the events in TITHE and VALIANT, 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, 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.