Book rec: Blood and Iron
As commanded by mist_stalker I'm reccing my latest wonderful read. I love it when you discover a new author (new to me anyway!) The novel is Blood and Iron: A Novel of the Promethean Age by Elizabeth Bear.
The genre is Urban Fantasy, with elements of traditional Faerie. The novel opens in modern-day New York. The Dark and Light courts, or the Unseelie and the Seelie Sidhe, or both fighting the repression of their magic and influence by a group of human Mages, known as the Prometheus Club. The main protagonist is a human, working as a Seeker, a kidnapper of humans with Faerie Magic, for the Seelie Sidhe. She herself had been kidnapped from the human world, and bound against her will, to act as a Seeker. Her target this time is the latest Merlin, a human of extraordinary power born every 500 years or so, at times of pivotal magic. The Unseelie Sidhe and the Prometheus Club also seek the Merlin... I'm enjoying it very much - I'm almost finished. A few times, I had to leaf back to earlier chapters to work out what was going on, as seemingly minor characters were suddenly revealed as major pivotal characters, but other than that (I should have been paying more attention I guess) it's wonderful reading. A brilliant juxtaposition of contemporary urban life and traditional Faerie.