Artifice=high. Heart=low. Too many impossible things before breakfast.

I couldn't get involved. Too much backstory. Too many competing mythologies. Fae, werewolves, Arthurian legend, talking trees, oblique references to events and people I couldn't keep straight.The problem might be in me.

This was my first book by Elizabeth Bear. It is intended to be the first book in (I quote from Bear's website) "a sprawling same-world fantasy cycle beginning in Summer 2006 with Blood & Iron, followed in 2007 by Whiskey & Water. These books deal with the five-century-old silent war between Faerie and the iron world, and the lives altered and destroyed on either side."I really wanted to like this book a lot, but I found it hard to get into. It was very similar, I thought, to many other books tha...

I might go back to this book; I don't know. I reached page 196 and realized I didn't care about any of the characters. I wasn't even curious about them. Bear's idea is good, but it seems, as several other reviews have pointed out, that she is throwing every single myth or legend motif into the mix, and it doesn't quite work. In some ways, it feels like she is going down a list. Okay, I mentioned a kelpie, now I need to mention Arthur, and so on. Her twist on Merlin was cool, but even that charac...

The powers of faerie are fighting a losing war with the iron powers of humans. This generation’s Merlin has been found, and both the faerie Seeker and mage Matthew of the human Prometheus Club must try to win her loyalty for their side. But this time it’s more than just the Merlin – a dragon prince is coming, a man in the mold of Arthur and Vlad Dracula, who will pay the mother dragon in blood as he is destined to do.This is a really excellent book. It divides its time between the eerie realms o...

ORIGINAL REVIEW:Werewolves. Fae. Magic. A rich, detailed world with marvelous, multilayered characters.And the Kelpie? OMG, the Kelpie.SECOND READING:The Kelpie is twice a scary, thrice as hot, and ten times as heartbreaking the second time around. And rereading this after having read the other 3 books, I can see where Bear was already laying the foundations for the other stories, weaving in references to characters we don't meet until later.This book is probably my fourth-favorite book ever. Ri...

Genre: fantasy, possibly epic fantasy and arguably urban fantasy, but mostly it's fantisy with fairies.Half-way though the novel I was still unsure what the book is gonna do plot-wise... however, the characters and their evolving interactions are fascinating. It was described to me as "magic and fairie in modern New York" but it's rather more like Fairie with a dash of modern for relief. It really catches the feel of a court of immortals - the interpersonal histories go back a long, long time an...

The one where Seeker is a half-fae compelled by some sort of blackmail to serve the Queen of Faerie, who takes her off the task of kidnapping mortals and sends her to bind this generation's Merlin.I did not like this book. The author has packed into it every bit of British Isles mythology she can think of plus some she just made up. (Werewolves who change whenever they like, except at the new moon?) Two hundred and fifty pages in, she was still introducing new rules, so that I was forever having...

I found this book... frustrating. I think Elizabeth Bear is a fine writer, and I absolutely love her short fiction, but her novel didn't work for me. It had a lot of great ideas--a fascinating combination of myths with urban fantasy. In fact, the problem was that there were FAR too many of these ideas, so much so that it felt cramped and bloated. In one novel you have a band of wizards, warring Shakespearean and Celtic fairy courts, something like a dozen fairy queens, werewolves tribes, dukes o...

I impulsively picked up Blood and Iron from the library, and it's more readable than I expected from the excerpt on the author's web site. I'm honestly bored of Arthurian/Celtic stuff, but this one is moderately interesting, at least in terms of suitable bedtime reading. Yes, I damn with faint praise.

Racefail 2009. Will not read books by Bear.

A frustrating book which could've been better than it was, I think.The overall story is the type of thing I enjoy - magic vs. science, ancient vs. modern, with a sort of complex morality where both sides are right, and both sides are wrong, and you sort of like them and hate them equally. Well, not quite equally as, despite everything, I did side with Faerie because, as the Merlin said, a greenhouse is not a garden, and a garden is not a jungle, and I like a bit of wildness, me.But the character...

It's always delightful discovering another author in one's favourite genre whose entire oeuvre you want to read after finishing just one book.Blood and Iron begins in media res, with an agent of Faerie--the Seeker of the Daoine Sidhe--and an agent of humanity--the Promethean Club's Matthew Szczegielniak--chasing the same quarry: a faerie changeling. After introducing us to these two main characters, the book pulls back in scope and reveals the centuries-old conflict between Faerie and the Promet...

I found this to be a remarkably frustrating read. The first third or so is a terrific fantasy novel dealing with the Fae and a post-Arthurian mythos that I found fascinating. The rest of the book seemed as if it was written by a different author. The protagonist, a woman warrior caught up in Fae politics and developing into the next defacto ruler, suddenly becomes wildly unsympathetic. She enslaves one of the Unseelie Fae, breaks him and engages in what can only be viewed as nonconsensual sex (i...

A complex and fascinating fantasy set partly in modern NYC and partly in the faerie realm, where power, politics and the make-up of the world is shifting and all are in danger.  Difficult to summarize or describe but I greatly enjoyed this first book in the Promethean Age series.

4 1/2 starsFull review:http://fantasycafe.blogspot.com/2008/...

Wow. I loved this book.Bear has created a complicated and compelling world and tale in Blood and Iron. It builds on many well-known tales, particularly using Tam Lin, the Celtic faeries and the Arthurian legends, but with her own, personal and I think brilliant spin.The writing is beautiful; evocative, complex, metaphorical and lyrical. She paints pictures with words that touch the emotions and drag the reader in.There are layers upon layers here and I'm sure I didn't get all of them on this fir...

If you are expecting a simple urban fantasy story with mages and faeries, then you are in for quite a shock here. Blood an Iron is a novel to be read slowly, to be savored, and to be reread. As such, I have to admit that I didn't understand some of the references. The characters speak in riddles and do not spell everything out for you. It is as if we are looking through a window into their lives, not as if they were telling us a story. All of the characters understand the mythology and what is g...

I think the first thing to understand when talking about an Elizabeth Bear book is that it will not be a quick, easy read. Bear's work is complex and layered, and she doesn't do hand holding - as a reader, you take the plunge and spend a good deal of time trying to keep your head above water until you get your bearings in her world. Additionally, she doesn't really do the sympathetic protagonist, so feeling connected to her characters is often a challenge.Blood and Iron tackles a wide range of f...

A good book will educate you - show you what you don't know in a gentle fashion, increasing your knowledge. It will make you want to learn more once you're done reading it.By comparison, a bad book will just whap you about the head with what you don't know without telling you anything. This book just seemed to delight in frustrating me with what I didn't know about Celtic mythology and Arthurian legend, and reading it was like pulling out my teeth via the soles of my feet.I guess that's my way o...