Ironskin, by Tina Connolly
Sep. 28th, 2012 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mrissaReview copy provided by Tor.
I've enjoyed Tina Connolly's short fiction, so I was glad to have the opportunity to read Ironskin. And one of the things I enjoy most about it comes out front and center in the first chapter and stays there: it is a book about the aftermath of the Great War. It's not the same as our Great War, but a lot of the features are quite clearly inspired by it, including the maimed veterans--our heroine's mask and the mask worn by one of the characters in Boardwalk Empire are not at all dissimilar, though the injuries that caused them are very different. (German shrapnel in Boardwalk Empire. A fey curse in Ironskin. See? Different.) This is not the Jazz Age, but it very clearly evokes some of the same things that interest me about the Jazz Age--the drive for the new, the need to press on and forget the horrors of war--with a very different twist on how and why this world is enacting them. I really liked how the worldbuilding went there.
Unfortunately, the plot doesn't stand up to the worldbuilding very well. Everything that happens is telegraphed far in advance, and some characters seem to remain on the sympathetic side Just Because That's Why rather than because their actions bear even a cursory examination. But if you read an excerpt or plot summary (basically: a penniless governess goes to help a mysterious artist with his unruly fey-touched daughter in their country mansion; also there are many dress descriptions) and think that even though you probably know how it goes, you'd like a book that goes like that, and the world is kind of cool, the world is kind of cool.
I have to confess some confusion as to why it got blurbed as steampunk. I guess because steampunk is the (old) new hotness? Seriously, this is a lot more its own thing and a lot less fitting into a steampunk-geared-goggled mold. I hope that the blurb helps broaden the horizons of people who are in "I will only read steampunk yay I like steampunk" mode without putting off anybody who thinks "gahhhh no more steampunk so tired of steampunk." Also where the blurb says that the Beauty and the Beast roles are reversed...um. Blurbs are hard, is the moral of this story. Very very hard, and I should not care to have to write a great many of them myself under pressure. So only listen to them when you feel like it. Yes.
I've enjoyed Tina Connolly's short fiction, so I was glad to have the opportunity to read Ironskin. And one of the things I enjoy most about it comes out front and center in the first chapter and stays there: it is a book about the aftermath of the Great War. It's not the same as our Great War, but a lot of the features are quite clearly inspired by it, including the maimed veterans--our heroine's mask and the mask worn by one of the characters in Boardwalk Empire are not at all dissimilar, though the injuries that caused them are very different. (German shrapnel in Boardwalk Empire. A fey curse in Ironskin. See? Different.) This is not the Jazz Age, but it very clearly evokes some of the same things that interest me about the Jazz Age--the drive for the new, the need to press on and forget the horrors of war--with a very different twist on how and why this world is enacting them. I really liked how the worldbuilding went there.
Unfortunately, the plot doesn't stand up to the worldbuilding very well. Everything that happens is telegraphed far in advance, and some characters seem to remain on the sympathetic side Just Because That's Why rather than because their actions bear even a cursory examination. But if you read an excerpt or plot summary (basically: a penniless governess goes to help a mysterious artist with his unruly fey-touched daughter in their country mansion; also there are many dress descriptions) and think that even though you probably know how it goes, you'd like a book that goes like that, and the world is kind of cool, the world is kind of cool.
I have to confess some confusion as to why it got blurbed as steampunk. I guess because steampunk is the (old) new hotness? Seriously, this is a lot more its own thing and a lot less fitting into a steampunk-geared-goggled mold. I hope that the blurb helps broaden the horizons of people who are in "I will only read steampunk yay I like steampunk" mode without putting off anybody who thinks "gahhhh no more steampunk so tired of steampunk." Also where the blurb says that the Beauty and the Beast roles are reversed...um. Blurbs are hard, is the moral of this story. Very very hard, and I should not care to have to write a great many of them myself under pressure. So only listen to them when you feel like it. Yes.
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Date: 2012-09-29 04:10 pm (UTC)I am not always great at including the Kindle in the category "what I have to read" when I'm casting about for my next new book and I'm in the house, because I have the habit of walking over to my grandpa's desk and looking at the book piles. The book piles are canonically What There Is To Read! So I need to get better at casting the net so that it includes stuff on the Kindle that isn't library stuff on the Kindle with a return deadline, because I actually do want to read stuff on there that isn't in that category. But travel was the really big danger zone for me getting stuck reading things I didn't like, and now not so much.
I also do not get stuck reading and rereading the sign about when the passport stuff is open in the post office, for example, because my Kindle is my book security blanket, in my purse at all times except when it's charging.
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