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camiclarkbooks's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
“Ironside” features the return of the faerie changeling Kaye from “Tithe,” this time with an impossible quest to prove her love to the new Unseelie King, Roiben.
Although I read “Tithe” in high school and loved it (it’s the first teen books I remember reading), I never read “Ironside” because I thought I knew how the quest was going to end. I was right, in a way, but I’m glad to have read it anyway.
Although I read “Tithe” in high school and loved it (it’s the first teen books I remember reading), I never read “Ironside” because I thought I knew how the quest was going to end. I was right, in a way, but I’m glad to have read it anyway.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail
Minor: Grief, Kidnapping, Cursing, Violence, Classism, and War
beckyyreadss's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
I wanted to read this book because my goal for last year was to discover more authors. Holly Black is adored on Booktok but I didn’t want to jump into her most popular work. I decided to start at the beginning and read the first book in this series. I enjoyed this first book, I struggled with the second book and the third book.
This book follows Kaye, who we got to know in the first book. She is a pixie and she has declared herself to her lover Roiben on the day of his coronation. So he is forced to send her on a seemingly impossible quest. Now Kaye is forbidden to see or speak to him unless she can find the one thing she knows doesn’t exist – a faerie who can tell a lie. Kaye is miserable and convinced that she belongs nowhere in this world, so she decides to reveal the truth to her mother – that she is a changeling left in place of a human child. Her mother’s shock reaction sends Kaye back to the Faerie realm in search of her human counterpart in a bid to return her to Ironside. Once again, Kay finds herself a pawn in the games of the Seelie Court. Queen Silarial wants Roiben’s throne and she will use any means necessary to get it.
The first book follows Kaye and Roiben, the second book follows Luis and Dave, and the third book mixes them. After how brutal the first two books were, this book just didn’t do it for me. It was a little weak compared to the other two. I would have loved to have seen a battle between brother and sister, but it just sort of fizzle out. I would have loved a new set of characters for this book. This book kept going on about some big battle and then the battle was done in one chapter, I just wanted more. This book just have been cut down by about 10% due to the repeating of stuff we already knew about in the first and second book.
Overall, I really enjoyed this series and I would love to read more of Holly Black’s work and will plan to.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death, Violence, and Blood
Moderate: Child death, Grief, Adult/minor relationship, and Cursing
Minor: Drug abuse, Kidnapping, and Addiction
mmefish's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
The flavor of that blood stayed with him through the long years of his service. […] But by then he could no longer remember whose blood it was, only that he had grown used to the taste.
I liked this, despite the fact that (like someone else has mentioned) whiteness is a standard in this book and skin colour is only mentioned when the person isn’t white. But my enjoyment came from the characters Holly Black created (I actually worried about Corny this time) and, of course, the faeries. I hope miss Black writes another book featuring them in the future.
Edit: she is, she is writing another book! 😭
Content Warnings
Graphic: Kidnapping, Violence, and Death
Moderate: Adult/minor relationship, Blood, Grief, Suicidal thoughts, and Alcohol
Minor: Child death, Mass/school shootings, Gore, and Sexual content
mollyanne624's review against another edition
adventurous
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Cursing, Grief, and Murder
Minor: Abandonment, War, Vomit, Pregnancy, and Eating disorder
bookcaptivated's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Death, Murder, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Child death and Grief
Minor: Addiction, Drug abuse, Drug use, and Kidnapping
booksthatburn's review against another edition
dark
emotional
tense
medium-paced
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
4.0
IRONSIDE is about self-loathing borne of receiving cruelty, and figuring out how to live even if you hate yourself. I feel like it spent so long trying to fix things that were messed up in TITHE that it didn't really get to shine, because it does have some pretty good stuff going on. The main quest is interesting, while the machinations and real goals of the antagonist are complex but understandable.
The middle section felt rushed and pretty confusing, there were a lot of moving pieces and the plot is about various tricks and obfuscations, so it kind of fits the story but made for a hectic reading experience. This isn't necessarily good nor bad, but it is a thing. The MC has a major miscommunication and just doesn't get to fix it because the other character is really stubborn. In TITHE that character was also a point-of-view character, and if he'd been one here as well a lot of the confusing stuff could have been cleared up without destroying the contrivance which drives the plot (which is probably why he wasn't a POV character). I don't like it when books use miscommunications in order to drive plots, so your tastes may differ. I do recognize that there were a bunch of things contributing to the characters' decisions, even as I think they make for a weaker narrative.
This is the book in a trilogy, so it's time for the sequel checklist. It wraps up a major thing left hanging from the previous book. The main storyline started within the book and wasn't present in either of the prior books and includes a major thing which was introduced and resolved within the book. It did wrap up some hanging plot threads from the first two books. The MCs are different from the previous book but are returning from the first book, their voices are distinct and fit with what I remember from when they narrated previously. I don't think this would make sense if someone picked it up without knowing at least the first book, TITHE. I maintain that book two, VALIANT, is completely skippable, all of Luis's relevant backstory is explained in IRONSIDE so you'll be fine here if you didn't read VALIANT, but you'd have a rough time without TITHE.
This did a lot to address the Asian rep and queer rep issues which began in TITHE and continued in VALIANT, but some things were still a bit off. While it still mentioned the appearance of random Asian background characters, it also mentioned some other people's ethnicities. Whiteness was definitely treated as a default (only non-white ethnicities were mentioned when describing people), but it got away from the creepy connection between Asian features (eye shape, specifically) and being inhuman which was so troubling in TITHE. It also drops the hyper-focus on the female MC's half-Japanese appearance and works to remedy the situation where the only Japanese rep is someone who isn't even Japanese by bringing in the actually half-Japanese character who briefly appeared in TITHE. As for queer rep, we finally get the male MC being in consensual romantic/sexual situations and working through his trauma from the first book, so that was a major improvement.
Overall I think this did a lot to remedy the problems in TITHE while still doing its own thing. The characters mostly wind up in a better place than they started (the ones who live, anyway). They have a lot of character growth but not so much as to be unreasonable given the short timeframe of the book.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Blood, Death, Torture, and Violence
Moderate: Child death
Minor: Confinement, Kidnapping, Self harm, and Vomit
CW for alcohol, vomit, kidnapping, confinement, references to self harm, blood, violence, torture, child death (not depicted), animal death, major character death, death.multiplyoctopi's review against another edition
adventurous
medium-paced
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Content Warnings
Minor: Violence, Kidnapping, Grief, Blood, Death, and Addiction
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