Ironside

Title: Ironside; A Modern Faery’s Tale

Author: Holly Black

Publication date: 2007

Number of pages: 323

Genre: Young Adult fiction

Geographical Setting: New York City & New Jersey

Time Period: present, 2000s

Series: yes, third book of the Faerie series, more of continuation of the first book Tithe

Plot Summary: Pixie changeling Kaye is in love with the king of the Unseelie Court. There is war brewing with his kingdom and the rival Seelie Court. Kaye finds herself in the middle as the possible key to bringing peace and stopping death on the faerie and human side. She also struggles with the desire to tell her human mother that she is not the daughter she gave birth to while her best friend, the human Corny, joins her on this quest.

Subject Headings: coming of age, faeries, supernatural, homosexuality, fantasy, love, first love, betrayal, loyalty, war, urban fantasy

Appeal: exciting addition to the Faerie series; tackles issues facing young adults like first love, homosexuality, identity; fantasy set in modern times and location

If you liked Ironside, you might enjoy: Cassandra Clare’s City of Bones, Charles de Lint’s Little (Grrl) Lost, Herbie Brennan’s Faerie Wars

end of summer semester...

In the past couple of weeks I have completed the summer semester and moved. I have not been able to get as much reading done as I would like but I have read a couple of books. Below I give some brief intros to two young adult books.

Destroy All Cars by Blake Nelson (2009, 224 pages, hardcover)

Diatribe by a teen boy on the wastefulness of American consumer culture mixed with the angst of first love and its loss. This book is a fun and quick read for male readers especially reluctant readers and any teens into environmentalism or with leanings to activism. It is in diary/manifesto-style and interspersed with the protagonist’s AP English essays.

Tags: environmentalism, Pacific Northwest, Portland, Oregon, books for boys, consumerism, suburbia, first love, first person.

The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation, Vol. 1: The Pox Party by M.T. Anderson (2006, 368 pages, hardcover)

Historical fiction of Revolutionary America mainly told from the diary of Octavian, a black youth raised in Boston and given a classical education. Octavian is a research subject studied by the radical philosophers of the The Novanglian College of Lucidity. As he matures and uses the observational skills he has been taught, he begins to decipher his purpose within the College and in America as a man’s property. This book is not for the causal teen reader. The historical nature of the language may take some readers more than a few chapters to acclimate to however, the reader is greatly rewarded with a moving and exciting tale. Winner of the National Book Award and Michael L. Printz Honor Book.

Tags: historical fiction, slavery, American Revolution, diary, African American, survival