Stone Song (Cold Iron #3) by D.L. McDermott

Sorcha never believed her grandmother when she warned her about the fairies, when she took away Sorcha’s violin and forbid her from music – a fate that, for a girl born with the mystical voice of the druids, is almost impossible to imagine

She learned how right her grandmother was when she fell into a fae’s clutches and it was only by chance and her long buried powers that she managed to escape. Now she’s much more careful – but the fae have still come looking for her; Elada with his claims of love and alliance and the Prince who wishes to enslave her for his own terrible needs. Worse, there are many fae with long memories of the druids’ abuses – and are still bitterly seeking revenge.

The framework of this book is interesting. The underlying world building is excellent – we have the ancient druids and fae with a terrible history that is interestingly balanced on both sides. There’s a lot of hatred to bury that is especially difficult and complicated given the immortal nature of the fae who, of course, remember the atrocities the druids committed against them and their loved ones. Asking them to just let it go is complicated. We have at least 3 different fae factions who, to a greater or lesser degree, all fear the Prince successfully bringing the court back. But they all have dramatically different views when it comes to humans and especially druids – the politicking as these groups try to work together but clash is excellent to navigate.

But when you look at the details it doesn’t follow through so well. There’s too much call-back to characters from previous books (and I think part of this is, I admit, from my missing the second book), like Conn and Beth and Helene – I’m not sure why they’re even in this book since they didn’t really add anything to it.

The plot itself starts quite well – though romance is a large part and (as mentioned below), I’m not a fan of it. Sorcha is interesting enough – but the ending is a rather clichéd kidnapping complete with “I must go alone because bad guy said so” which is so infuriatingly overdone and hardly ever makes sense – especially considering Sorcha’s complete ignorance over what she’s dealing with. We have a side order of trusting the bad guys to keep their word (complete non-spoiler: they don’t).  And relying on her super power kicking in despite her being very new to it, barely able to control it, not even able to use it most of the time AND not expecting the bad guys to have a counter measure for even though they know she has it and are all super worried because of that. As an extra bonus, the bad guys who super-duper want her dead, are going to wait a long time before they actually kill her.

Cold Iron by D.L.McDermott

Beth is an archaeologist, struggling to make her own name when so much of her work – including her very unusual, even supernatural, ability to find dig sites are credited to her far-from-pleasant ex-husband. One of those finds leads her to a mound in Ireland – and a being that she releases.

Normally, dealing with her ex-husband’s theft of artefacts and attempts to frame her would be her main concern – but Conn, the ancient fae warrior, is seeking not just his sword, but Beth herself. The mortal woman has caught his eye and his fancy – and the fae never accept no for an answer.

But these new explorations have revealed a side of Beth she has long ignored – and could have implications for all of the fae, and the world beside.

This book had some strong positive ticks. The world building is solid, there has been some research or familiarity with old Irish myths and legends, we have some nice shout outs to mythology and mythological figures and a definite knowledge to some of the old tales which I really appreciated.

On top of that has been some very solid world building with some nice intriguing, interesting twists – particularly the druids and how they interact with the fae and their history. It’s novel, it’s original, it’s interesting and it has a lot of depth for exploration and nuance and potential conflict, I like it.

The fae are also presented in a way that is suitably alien and scary – and not in any way twee or shiny or friendly as well; scary fae are always good to read about.

The characterisation is pretty solid when it comes to Beth – she’s a character with a full, involved history, motivation and depth that has really created a character with a lot of depth behind her that reflects on her actions and thoughts really well. She’s a strong character, a fully fleshed character. Conn is much less so – he’s beautiful with a layer of angst for characterisation. His growth and evolution would be an interesting element to him but it’s pretty simplistic and expected – he’s not a bad character, he’s just not an amazing one either

One rather curious aspect of this book was the romance. It kept reaching the very edge of holding up some of the most awful tropes – and I was ready to tear it into little shreds – then twist right away from it with a subversion. The fae are, as I mentioned, not nice people in this book – at very least they’re arrogant, predatory and pretty lacking in anything resembling compassion and they have a vast sense of entitlement. Which means, when it comes to humans they find attractive, they don’t ask and they don’t care about consent.