Ironside: A Modern Faery's Tale

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 drunkenly declares herself to Roiben, he sends her on a seemingly impossible quest to find 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 when Kaye returns to the faerie courts, a battle of wits and weapons is being waged over Roiben's throne, and she soon finds herself at the center of it all.VOYATaking up her story where Tithe (Simon & Schuster, 2002/VOYA October 2002) left off, Black transports her readers between the human and Faerie worlds straddled by sixteen-year-old Kaye Fierch. Drunk on faerie wine at Roiben's coronation as Unseelie King, she takes bad advice and tries to declare her devotion to Roiben, who by custom must give her a quest. But he gives her a seemingly impossible one: to find a faerie who can lie. Stung by rejection, Kaye must next decide if she should confess to her punk-rocker mom that she is actually a changeling and not her daughter. Her mother's shock plunges her back into the faerie world, again accompanied by her gay best friend, Corny, and his new friend with the Sight, Luis, where she vows to find her mother's true daughter. As the politics between the Bacchanalian Seelie and Unseelie courts grow more bloody and treacherous, Kaye feels used by both sides, but finally she is able to see things clearly and to help Roiben attain the crowns of both kingdoms. Black's fans will be thrilled with this sequel, which resolves not only Roiben's and Kaye's tale but Corny's as well. The story path is again lurid, with the depravity of the underworld summed up by Luis, who says of the fey folk, "They have forever, and what do they do-spend all their time eating and fucking and figuring out complicated ways to kill each other." Indeed these aspects again mark this dark, edgy fantasy as one for the high school audience.