This was arc I got from editor whose taste aligns with mine. I'm a little speechless right now. This is Jane Eyre, re-imagined steampunk style. It's just amazing. Confident, clever prose. A ferocious heroine. A broken, tragic hero, who needs her. The worldbuilding is just fascinating. The writing is fabulous. I devoured this book and now I'm hungry for the sequel. When it comes out, get it.

"a steampunk retelling of Jane Eyre with fairies."What? I.Am.IN. ;P

I started out liking this book. It had a clever setting and an interesting story. I enjoyed reading about this world that once ran on fairy magic and then had to adjust after its sudden loss. I loved reading about Jane and Dorie interacting and was curious to see how Dorie's conflict would be resolved. And then, like so many other books, everything went to hell as soon as the love interest showed up.I hated every single scene with Edward. He was so poorly written that he didn't even come off as

Oh, alas and woe is me that I did not enjoy this more. I TRIED to love it. I WANTED to love it. I did not love it. In the end, I didn't even like it. I didn't care a single bit for any character. I didn't care if they lived or died, were happy or sad, or whatever. NOTHING.Gah.I hate it when that happens, even more so when it's a book that I had such high expectations for. It's partly my fault too, for trying to push off my expectations onto a book. I took one look at that fantastic cover and tho...

Rating: 2.5 Stars I’ll be the first to admit that I had expectations for this book - high expectations. Yet, the reason they weren’t met doesn’t lie with the fault of this book entirely. I feel as if many other readers will truly love Ironskin, and they should. It has a lot to love, but somehow, it wasn’t the right book for me. For one, Ironskin is a based quite loosely off of the story of Jane Eyre, a classic by Charlotte Bronte that happens to be one of my favorite novels ever. Thus,...

This was apparently a loose fantasy retelling of Jane Eyre. I cannot make any comment on that as I've not read the original! What I can say is that the story did have a vaguely Victorian era feel to it. The fantasy elements of the story came from the presence of the Fey and their magic. Five years ago, during the Great Battle with the Fey, Jane Eliot was wounded by a Fey weapon while trying to save her younger brother. She now has to wear an iron mask that covers the scarred half of her face in

"When what you hope for appears on your doorstep, there is every reason to doubt its reality."A re-telling of the classic tale of Jane Eyre interwoven with cool metals and threads of fae mythology and magic, Ironskin is an unforgettable story exploring the beauty behind the mask. Whether that mask be one of iron, or the facade one shows to the world.

Read This Review & More Like It On My Blog!It's easily apparent from the very start of this deceptively good novel that Ironskin is a story loosely based on Charlotte Brontë's beloved classic Jane Eyre. Fortunately for me, I have never read the original, and that's one of the reasons I think I was free to enjoy this supernaturalized version as much as I did. I had no predispositions or favorites or even opinions going in - Connolly was free to do whatever she wanted with any of the characters, o...

On the book jacket it describes Ironskin as being a retelling of both Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast. Personally, I thought it seemed a little more Eyreish than B & B.Doesn't matter.It's also touted as steampunk.Ok, so I'm a little confused as to what elements a book needs to be classified as steampunk. As far as I can tell, if one person shows up wearing goggles, and another turns on a gas lamp...ta-da! It's steampunk!Soooo. By that definition, yes. This was a steampunk retelling of Jane Ey...

Fantastic in parts and very muddled in others... unsure what to think

3.5 starsJane Eliot has lost her teaching position and applied for the position of governess in the country at Silver Birch Hall. She wears an iron mask, covering the injury on one side of her face where she was hit by fey shrapnel during the war. The ironskin serves to keep the curse that comes with the injury, contained within her body and stops it from leaking out and affecting others. Edward Rochart's daughter, Dorie was born during the war and although she bears no scar or injury she is fey...

Originally reviewed here.The moment I heard about a steampunk retelling of Jane Eyre, I geared up for its release. I am always up for a retelling of this book. And I've had spectacular success in the past. This one is not YA, or even New Adult, and I could tell it relied more heavily on the rich fantasy aspects of the world and story, all of which I was eager to fall into. I love the cover, particularly the iron mask, and everything about it just had the ring of excellence to it. This is not to

What a beautifully layered story! For what seemed like a Jane Eyre retelling with supernatural elements, I was expecting something more straightforward and recognizably similar to the plot structure of Jane Eyre, but this novel was full of the unexpected! It does not directly follow the arc of Jane Eyre, but infuses the spirit and romance of the original novel into a new story. I found the relationship between Jane and her pupil, Dorie, unexpectedly complex, as Jane struggles to get through to h...

err im not sure what was going on. this was such an odd book. i know it was based off the original Jane Eyre and there was a lot of parallels with that novel but this retelling just fell short of good. For one the romance was extremely forced. They fell in love despite having the most minimal interactions with each other? what? i feel like Tina Connolly forced them together for the sake of the plot and i found myself rolling my eyes at every "romantic" scene they had together. I found Jane's int...

Jane Eyre in an iron mask?! *faints* SO looking forward to this one.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll reiterate: I do not take authors messing with my Jane Eyre lightly. If you are going to attempt to paint a new gloss over something that has already been perfected to my eyes, you’re going to have to bring something completely new to the table. In this regard, I applaud Connolly’s efforts to entwine a fey glamour over the well known Bronte tale, but I can’t say that she pulled off all she hoped to achieve.Ironskin suffers from a dissonance between Connolly’s desire

Originally posted at The Wandering Fangirl.I have to confess I've never read Jane Eyre. Really. It's on my list of classics to eventually read, though my goal of reading forty classics in 2013 fell by the wayside. (Damn you, comics! But not really, I love you.) As a result, I went into Ironskin completely unaware of what was a retelling and what was original story (well, obviously the fey stuff is original), which led to a pretty interesting reading experience.The first two thirds of the novel u...

3.5 Stars.The world building for this novel was intriguing, but I didn't get fully engaged in the novel until about halfway through. Once I got into the story I really enjoyed it, and I will definitely be reading Copperhead, the second book in the series. I would recommend this novel to anyone that enjoys historical novels (especially those set at the beginning of the 20th century), and also readers who like some supernatural elements blended with their historical fiction (kind of an oxymoron, b...

Another addition to my Jane Eyre retellings shelf. I'm hugely biased because of the source material, and full disclaimer, I also know the author and enjoy her greatly as a person. That said... great book. Full on Jane Eyre retelling awesomeness, dark and compelling, with a dish of Tam Lin on the side. Jane has survived a fairy war; the images of fighting the fairy war are extremely powerful and evocative. World-building in high concept scenarios so often lets me down, but this was both subtle an...

Ironskin is a clever re-telling of Jane Eyre with a delicious heaping tablespoon of faerie thrown in. Since Jane Eyre is tied for my favorite book of all time, I definitely loved that about this book. I appreciated catching the references to the original novel and reading the author's original story with her own ideas based on this beloved classic. In other words, this is not a word for word redux of Jane Eyre. Instead it's a "what if?" sort of take on the novel by Charlotte Brontë.I am captivat...