Blood and Iron: A Novel of the Promethean Age (Book 1) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Matthew the Magician leaned against a wrought iron lamppost on Forty-second Street, idly picking at the edges of his ten iron rings and listening to..." (more)
Key Phrases: blond wolf, little treachery, black stag, Dragon Prince, Daoine Sidhe, Fyodor Stephanovich (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ancient grudges and ruthless schemes are simply business as usual to the Faerie court in Bear's complex and involving contemporary fantasy. Seeker, formerly Elaine Andraste, is a changeling bound to the Mebd, the queen of the Daoine Sidhe, to find other changelings and bring them to the Faerie court. There, like legendary Tam Lin, and Seeker's own son, Ian, they entertain the queen until she tires of them. Now the queen needs Seeker to find—and win the heart of—the new Merlin, latest incarnation of a being who, in the hands of the Prometheans, could be used to destroy the Fae. Pragmatic college professor Carel Bierce, the first female Merlin, is not easily swayed by Fae—or Promethean—advances. Long-forgotten rivalries and unsuspected blood ties arise to tug at Seeker's loyalties, even as the queen promises to free Ian when she succeeds. Campbell-winner Bear (Worldwired) overturns the usual vision of Faerie, revealing the compelling beauty and darkness only glimpsed in old ballads and stories like "Tam Lin." (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Description

Award-winning fantasy

For centuries, the human mages of the Prometheus Club and the otherworldly creatures of Faerie have battled for control over Earth’s destiny with neither side capable of achieving victory over the other. Their impasse has just come to an end…

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Product Details

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Roc (June 3, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0451462173
• ISBN-13: 978-0451462176
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #214,955 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Extremely disappointed, November 15, 2006

By	Kevin T. Quinn (Akron, OH) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blood and Iron: A Novel of the Promethean Age (Paperback)

After reading Hammered, Scardown, and Worldwired, Bear's previous trilogy, I was really looking forward to this book. The others were taut thrillers that felt as though they had been one large (huge) novel before being chopped up into three books by a publisher. In those books, the characters were interesting, and the plot was familiar enough that it felt comforting, but went off in enough unexpected directions that you never really knew what was going to happen next.

Blood and Iron is the opposite of all that. Instead of being a middle-future military sci-fi, like her first trilogy, her newest book is a modern-day fantasy story. It's the story of a secret war being fought under our noses. On the one side are the forces of the Sidhe, the fairies of British and Celtic mythology. This is not an platoon of Tinkerbells here - these are the fey folk of Tam Lin, Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, or Terry Pratchett's Lords and Ladies. These are creatures of glamour and illusion who steal away mortals to use as sport and entertainment.

Ranged against the Sidhe are the humans of the Prometheus Club - a secret society of magicians who guard our world against incursions by the fey. They use the strength and magic of iron to keep the enemies of humanity at bay.

The "war" has recently escalated with the appearance of a Merlin, a person who acts as a source of magic power. Both sides of the war are seeking to identify and court the Merlin, hoping to bring that strength to their side.

Sounds like a fun adventure, right? It could have been. In fact, some individual scenes (including the novel opener) are written with great energy and are truly exciting. But the book just never grabbed me.

Part of this is because of Bear's writing style. She has two quirks that stand out in particular. First, she hates attributing dialog. A conversation between two characters will go on for a page and a half, with maybe one "she said" at the beginning to start things off, and few (if any) over the next couple of pages. I know that some people hate the word "said," but it's there for a purpose - to help your readers. If a reader has to keep going back to the beginning to trace who-said-what, then you're doing something wrong.

Her second quirk (if you can call it that) is to throw a near-endless series of details at the reader, with little explanation until much later. Her novels truly start in medias res, but she doesn't do enough in this story to make the reader feel a part of the world - it feels like you're in a foreign country and you've turned on a documentary in the middle. You feel like a confused outsider.

(Possible Spoiler In This Paragraph)
Adding to that feeling is the sense that, while this is a fantasy, it's not my fantasy. The story is told from the points of view of two characters on opposite sides of the conflict - a Seeker for the Sidhe who kidnaps humans for her queen, and a mage of the Prometheus Club. The Merlin they seek is (you figure out early on) a bisexual college professor/musician. The Seeker is a middle-aged woman who's been betrayed by her lover, and had her child grow up without her. The human mage is Sensitive Ponytail Guy (no offense to any guys who might have a ponytail, or are sensitive; though if you are sensitive, you're probably going to take offense anyway;). All three are just about the blandest, most uninteresting lead characters I've ever come across in literature. I didn't care about them. I didn't care about the things that had happened to them, and I didn't care about the things they were going to have to do.
(End Spoiler Paragraph)

And that is the biggest problem I have with the book - I just don't care. Bear has tried to structure the war between Faerie and Humans in such a way that the reader sympathises with both sides. The only problem with that is that if you don't care who wins, then you don't care who loses, and there's no drama.

I might be willing to give Elizabeth Bear another try in the future, but I was really disappointed by this book. I stopped reading it about 2/3 of the way through.

13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an outstanding, intricate dark Faerie fantasy, July 7, 2006

By	Margaret Johnston (Seabeck, WA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Blood and Iron: A Novel of the Promethean Age (Paperback)

Elaine Andraste, now known simply as Seeker, is a servant of the Medb, Queen of the Daoine Sidhe; stolen by the Fae in childhood, she has spent her life bound to the Faerie Realm, stealing other human children for the queen. Matthew is a mage, of the mysterious Promethean Club, a group of human magic users in league against Faerie. When the Medb requires Seeker to trap the Merlin, the newest incarnation of the powerful wizard who could save Faerie or doom it, Seeker comes into conflict with Matthew and his allies, as well as with rivals from other Faerie factions.

Bear weaves together strands of folklore and legend from King Arthur to Tam Lin with her own imaginings to create a compelling vision of Faerie, both terrible and beautiful; it's no wonder the Merlin has difficulty deciding whether to aid Faerie or oppose it. The characters are fiercely memorable, particularly Elaine and her wild Fae companion, Whiskey the kelpie (a shapeshifting water horse). The story is immersive and intricate, full of schemes and rivalries, blood ties and friendships, mystery and sorcery, and the prose is equally complex and allusive. It required some concentration to sink into the narrative, but once I was in, I emerged only with reluctance. This is one of the best books I've read this year, and one of the best treatments of Faerie I've ever read; I await the sequel, _Whiskey and Water_, with great eagerness.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A meta-fairy tale, August 20, 2008

By	lb136 "lb136" (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Blood and Iron: A Novel of the Promethean Age (Paperback)

"Blood and Iron," the prolifically brilliant Elizabeth Bear's shimmery, impressionist novel is equal part fairy tale, critique of fairy tales, and the history of fairy tales; and it's grim but dryly witty. ("Nothing but glamourie, and gone on the stroke of midnight. Fortunately there were no clocks in Faerie.") It examines, among much else, Celtic mythology, werewolvery, and the Arthurian legends; it's inhabited by female merlins, water horses, a unicorn or two, a talking willow tree, and some spellbound sleeping royalty. Characters here appear because they've been written about in other tales, and thus become part of this book's reality.

Its as close to a heroine as you'll find in it is Elaine Andraste (I love the traditional Arthurian first name and the Romanian surname), called Seeker. She's bound by the faeries to kidnap halfbreed children and deliver them unto the Queen, Mebd. The mortal group known as the Prometheans, led by Elaine's mother Jane, want to stop the faerie folk once and for all. Essentially, it's a battle between the forces of ancient magic (the blood), who are trying to hold on against the forces of modernity (the iron).

It's setting is contemporary, and so is the language. An occasional four-letter word helps mock the traditional high-flown speech you usually find in fantasies. It's by no means an easy read. It's a novel of images, glimmerings, indirections. The points of view constantly shift, and the narrative switches off beween first- and third-person. And not everything's explained. Maybe you'll stop and read a passage a second time, or a third. It lacks a badly needed list of characters. But it's very much worth the effort.

NOTES AND ASIDES: Google Tam Lin before reading . . . the author salutes the late Peter Jennings by giving him a very brief cameo . . . first of (so far) four, but complete in itself.