Elizabeth Bear, Blood and Iron [Library of Babel]

I actually read this months ago, but I'm only just getting around to booklogging it. Which is a problem, because I no longer remember it all that clearly...

Elizabeth Bear's previous books were a trilogy of competent neo-Heinlein adventure stories, so it's perfectly logical that her next book, Blood and Iron, should be a fantasy novel about the Sidhe in New York. Um, right?

Blood and Iron mostly follows three characters: Matthew Szczegielniak, a mage of the Promethus Club, an organization dedicated to fighting Faerie by any means necessary; and Seeker, a young woman taken as a changeling and bound to the service of the Queen of the Sidhe; and Keith MacNeill, prince of sorts among the community of werewolves. The underlying mythology is pretty much straight out of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and the rest, with faerie queens and tributes of souls to Hell and all the rest, but Bear puts a twist on most of it.

The plot is set into motion when both Faerie and the Prometheus Club become aware of the existence of a Merlin, a human with incredible potential to do magic. If she (the Merlin is a woman who plays keyboards in a rock band) could be convinced to join one side or the other, it might be enough to tip the balance of power, and give one or the other a victory. Matthew and Seeker are both sent to win the Merlin over, and start a chain of events that will transform both Faerie and the world we know.

Given that set-up, I was expecting something much more in the Emma Bull vein than what I got...

This is a very busy book. In addition to the Merlin plot, there's all sorts of scheming about the royal succession among the werewolves, the role of the Queen of the Sidhe, a powerful Dragon and associated prophecies, and all sorts of dark secrets in the pasts of the protagonists. There are some lovely urban-fantasy atmospheric touches-- Matthew going to consult the stone lions in front of the New York Public Library, for example-- but the book doesn't give you much of a chance to enjoy them.

In some ways, the book reminds me of Guy Kay's Fionavar Tapestry, in which he did a sort of kitchen-sink treatment of mythology-- Tolkien and Malory and Spenser, oh my! As John Scalzi notes, Bear is an author who seems intent on writing in every possible subgenre of SF, and she approaches this book almost as if she were afraid she'd never get back to the urban/ Celtic fantasy genre, and didn't want to leave anything out. Like the Kay series, there's some wonderful stuff here, but there's so much stuff that it's hard to really sort out.

Kay became a much better writer when he shook off the Tolkien thing, and chose to focus on smaller, more controlled stories. I hope Bear follows his example, once she completes her mad swing through the genre, and comes back around for more.