Cross-posted on Readerling

Retellings of Gothic and/or Romantic classics in this here age of the happy ending are fraught with dangers. Plucky girls are given pluck and beauty, in defiance of people who are oh so jealous of them, and not much else; growling, terrible, inhuman assholes like Rochester and Heathcliff are neutered down to lapdogs like Edward Cullen; and the very worst of all: everything works out in the end. There should be fire and death and blood on the moors. Which is not to say t More...

3.5 stars

Jane Eliot has lost her teaching position and applied for the position of governess in the country at Silver Birch Hall. She wears an iron mask, covering the injury on one side of her face where she was hit by fey shrapnel during the war. The ironskin serves to keep the curse that comes with the injury, contained within her body and stops it from leaking out and affecting others.

Edward Rochart's daughter, Dorie was born during the war and although she bears no scar or injury she is fey More...

err im not sure what was going on. this was such an odd book. i know it was based off the original Jane Eyre and there was a lot of parallels with that novel but this retelling just fell short of good. For one the romance was extremely forced. They fell in love despite having the most minimal interactions with each other? what? i feel like Tina Connolly forced them together for the sake of the plot and i found myself rolling my eyes at every "romantic" scene they had together. I found Jane's int More...

Rating: 2.5 Stars

I’ll be the first to admit that I had expectations for this book - high expectations. Yet, the reason they weren’t met doesn’t lie with the fault of this book entirely. I feel as if many other readers will truly love Ironskin, and they should. It has a lot to love, but somehow, it wasn’t the right book for me. For one, Ironskin is a based quite loosely off of the story of Jane Eyre, a classic by Charlotte Bronte that happens to be one of my favorite novels ever. Thus, More...

Jane Eyre in an iron mask?! *faints* SO looking forward to this one.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll reiterate: I do not take authors messing with my Jane Eyre lightly. If you are going to attempt to paint a new gloss over something that has already been perfected to my eyes, you’re going to have to bring something completely new to the table. In this regard, I applaud Connolly’s efforts to entwine a fey glamour over the well known Bronte tale, but I can’t say that she pulled off all she hoped to achieve.

Ironskin suffers from a dissonance between Connolly’s desire More...

On the book jacket it describes Ironskin as being a retelling of both Jane Eyre and Beauty and the Beast. Personally, I thought it seemed a little more Eyreish than B & B.
Doesn't matter.
It's also touted as steampunk.
Ok, so I'm a little confused as to what elements a book needs to be classified as steampunk. As far as I can tell, if one person shows up wearing goggles, and another turns on a gas lamp...ta-da! It's steampunk!
Soooo. By that definition, yes. This was a steampunk retelling of Jan More...

Read This Review & More Like It On My Blog!

It's easily apparent from the very start of this deceptively good novel that Ironskin is a story loosely based on Charlotte Brontë's beloved classic Jane Eyre. Fortunately for me, I have never read the original, and that's one of the reasons I think I was free to enjoy this supernaturalized version as much as I did. I had no predispositions or favorites or even opinions going in - Connolly was free to do whatever she wanted with any of the character More...

This comes out on my birthday, yay! I don't think that's ever happened before. 8D

Bronte's Jane Eyre is a book that I will forever treasure. I haven't read all that many classics, but out of the ones I have read it's my favourite. This is the third re-telling of Jane Eyre I've read and unfortunately unlike the other two I was hugely let down.

Ironskin is a solid re-telling which I think will be appreciated by those who have not read the classic, but as an avid fan of the classic I couldn't help but make comparisons, and to me, this didn't quite have the spark Jane Eyre did.

How More...

What a beautifully layered story! For what seemed like a Jane Eyre retelling with supernatural elements, I was expecting something more straightforward and recognizably similar to the plot structure of Jane Eyre, but this novel was full of the unexpected! It does not directly follow the arc of Jane Eyre, but infuses the spirit and romance of the original novel into a new story. I found the relationship between Jane and her pupil, Dorie, unexpectedly complex, as Jane struggles to get through to h More...

Ironskin by Tina Connolly

This book is a melding of Jane Eyre, Steampunk, Regency romance and Speculative fiction, and I think that trying to mix all of these together has made for a fairly murky read. While this is a unique and interesting world, the bleakness of the story and characters left me feeling depressed instead of entertained.

Jane Eliot had been damaged with a Fey curse during the Fey War. Now she has to spend 16 out of 24 hours a day wearing and Iron mask to contain her curse. Edwar More...

I enjoyed this book. The world building was very interesting and well-done; post-war between the fey and humans. I thought the author captured the feelings of those directly and indirectly affected by the war very well. I felt Jane's despair and self-loathing (probably partly her true self and partly her 'curse' coming through), as well as her sister's mixed emotions about their relationship and society in general.

The relationship between Jane and Dorie, Rochart's daughter, was very well done, a More...

Meh. Jane was all right, Dorie was the most annoying child ever, and Edward was a twat.

Full review here: http://www.booksofamber.com/2012/12/i...

This was disappointing. I had heard good things about Ironskin before it was released, but once it came out the rating on Goodreads started to slowly decline. I ignored that - mostly - and was quite excited when I finally got to it this month, given the enticing premise. Alas, it fell flat.

Jane was a great character in the beginning of the novel. She wa More...

ARC from NetGalley. Thanks!

Well I'm done with this book, what now? I read every single word and I understood them all, but somehow this book got muddled. I'm stuck with this feeling that I read a bunch of flowery crap that amounted to almost nothing. Man, that sounds so harsh, but its true. The cover is so unbelievably gorgeous, I think I let it hype me up a bit too much. I should've also remembered I'm not exactly a Bronte type girl.

The world that Jane lives in is a post-war mess. This wasn't j More...

I was intrigued by the concept behind this take on Jane Eyre, and I'm open to new spins on old tales. Unfortunately, writers have a tough task ahead of them when they take on projects like these, because comparisons to the original are inevitable. Readers don't expect the same story, but we expect many of the elements that we loved so much in the source--and unfortunately, Ironskin's charms fall short of Jane Eyre's in every respect.

The world in this novel doesn't feel fully realized; we're giv More...

See more of my reviews on The YA Kitten!

Retellings can be tricky to pull off. In my experience, they work best when they capture the original's magic by relying on its plot and characters in certain places and diverging from the original in others in order to give it the feel that it's a book of its own, not a complete repeat of the original. It can be a difficult balance to create and unfortunately, I don't think Ironskin manages it, as a retelling of Jane Eyre with steampunk influences and fai More...

Ironskin is a retelling of the classic Jane Eyre mixed with a couple of fantastic elements—mainly fairies and fairy magic—and being a hardcore Jane Eyre and fantasy in general fan I was *extremely* excited to read it; needless to say I did the happy dance when my request on NetGalley for an advance copy of Ironskin was approved. (Many thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge!)

The book follows the basic steps of the classic, starting off with the heroine, Jane Eliot, arriving at Mr. Rochart’s house seeking More...

I was reading other reviewers, which is probably a big mistake, because while I knew there were rabid Jane Eyre fans, I didn't know they would jump on a retelling in such an explosive manner. I think my point is that if you worship Charlotte Bronte and you have a t-shirt with her image on it, you probably shouldn't buy this book.

On the other hand, I liked the basis of the plot, although swiped from JE. Moody moors governess meets steampunk meets mysterious fey critters.

Okay, pros: good writing, More...

“If the witch drowns, she wasn’t a witch,”

The book was great, simply a great example of human greed. It was astonishing how much fantasy and reality the author wove together until you didn't know what could really happen in real life and what was pure fantasy, impossible.
The only complain I have regarding this book is the fact that it described situations and surroundings with painstaking detail and I skipped through most of it.
I loved how our MC was flawed, she was vain sometimes, she was self More...

Ironskin by Tina Connolly is a young adult book that could be labeled as gothic, mash-up (for those that detest the touching of classic works), steampunk, historical, or fantasy. Jane Eliot wears a iron mask to hide the damage done to her face in the great war with the Fae, and to contain the curse left behind with the injury. Edward Rochart is a widowed father, and in need of a special person to care for his five year old daughter Dorie, who was born through unique circumstances. Teaching Dorie More...

really like it, im glad there's a second, though i could live without it. never read jane eyre so i don't know how much was original and how much was derivative, but i think the front page blurb is a little deceptive, "a steampunk beauty and the beast tale, beautifully and cleverly reversed" no ms aguirre, not really...

ho-hum

Jane Eliot came back from the war scarred, and nothing would ever be the same. before the war with the fey, humans used fey technology for everything never realizing that th More...

As Seen on Rabidreads.ca:

Ironskin sports two spiffy but slightly misleading “like this, like that” quotes which I will save you the trouble right now of being lead astray by.

Certainly Beauty and the Beast and Jane Eyre (although I haven’t read the latter) receive their sacrificial knick-knacks: a protagonist with a B&Besque curse (not hairy but Eyry?) and, on the Bronte side, recognizable names, personalities, and locations, BUT!!!

In its final act the hints that this world was much more are More...

I didn't really care about what was at stake for the main character in this book. Apparently she needs to save the world, but why she would want to isn't clear. She doesnt really seem to be a part of her world. And what is this world that she need to save? There is a country and a city, and this world has magic as well as industrial innovation, but I couldn't get a sense of specifics (such as names of locations, culture, and diversity). There was a war, but the reason it started and ended isn't More...

This book aims to be both a Beauty and the Beast story, and a re-telling of Jane Eyre. Lofty aims, both, and I don't think it succeeds at either.

Ironskin does some things right. I am always skeptical of books that claim to be steampunk, because rather a lot of them aren't (they are merely psuedo-Victorian, which isn't the same thing at all). This book both claims to be steampunk and is, so that makes me happy. It is not strongly steampunk, but it is a world where the major (human) invention is s More...

In some ways, this YA was a fairly well-known romance plot--independent woman meets dark & mysterious man. The fact that she is Jane and he is Mr. Rochart seems a homage to Jane Eyre, but set in a world damaged after a fairy war with humans in which the humans have won a Phyrric victory. The book is charming, nonetheless. It was interesting to read about Jane as damaged in the fairy war to carry a curse of rage. The only way she can keep infecting those around her is by wearing an iron mask, More...

http://www.simplystacie.net/2012/11/i...

It has been five years since the end of The Great War. A war which left Jane scarred both emotionally and physically. She lost her brave little brother in that cruel battle between the evil fey and humans. She also lost pieces of her humanity. She was fey cursed in the war, left with a harshly scarred left side of her face. The scar can never heal and it leaks of rage, a rage which affects the humans whom she comes in contact with. The only way to mask thi More...

This book was incredible, and I'm delighted beyond words that it's first of a series. It stayed with me long after reading, making me think a great deal about the images we hold of ourselves, and how often what we long to be (or what we thought we SHOULD have been) gets in the way of what we could be. How it keeps us from seeing our own strengths and talents. How labeling oneself "victim" traps a person in that role, keeping one mired in a painful past without hope for growth into a NEW role.

I t More...

2-1/2 stars
I won this from Tor publishing house from a book blog contest.

This book is apparently a retelling of Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I have never read Jane Eyre, so I think this book did better for me than most of the other reviewers I read, since I didn't have the original story in my head being sullied by this retelling.

Adele is a young woman who was scarred during the Great War. A fey bomb exploded near her brother during a battle with the fey, and pieces of the bomb were embedded More...