Home :: Books :: Science Fiction & Fantasy  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers
Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy

Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Cold Iron

Cold Iron

List Price: $5.99
Your Price:
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 >>

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: It's all worth it for Jorandel
Review: COLD IRON has its flaws (parts of it are a bit too graphic for my taste, and a lot of the characters need their mouths washed out with soap), but Jorandel, the lead singer for the elfrock band Cold Iron, is fascinating. Self-centered, disgusting, sociopathic, yes. Also incredibly complex and well-drawn. I bought the book for him. Jorie is repulsively attractive. I just wish I had liked the ending better.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Melisa Micheals book Cold Iron
Review: Cold Iron is a wonderfull book to read...Page turning and fast paced action...Makes for a real good night's read...I could not put it down...If she write's any more book along the same line then she will have her own little coner of the fantasy reader's truning to her book in a rush. Tragic,Enlighting,and thoughtfully put together with a plot that renders the haert.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Excellent Urban Fantasy!
Review: Cold Iron, and its companion novel Sister To The Rain, are rich and compelling reads that I freely recommend to anyone who enjoys reading fantasy. The thing I like best about Mrs. Michaels' writing is that she manages to avoid many of the worst faults commonly found in fantasy today. For starters, she has cleverly avoided the "cutesy" trap. The world she has built is every bit as dangerous as the one we live in and just as filled with bits of heartbreaking beauty and sorrow. You can see the gorgeous forest or the broken glass of a violently thrown whiskey bottle equally well. Another common fault she has avoided is "cardboard" characterization. Her characters are complex; both likeable and repellant, as unpredictable as real people, and you get the sense of depth and personal history that you do with real people. The relationships among the characters are also as varied, complex, and tangled as among real people and their relationships as well. I wish other writers worked as hard doing this as she has. There is only one flaw that I can find with Mrs. Michaels' books: They are too hard to find! I had to nag, nag, nag my local bookstore to "special order" this book for me when it should have been regular stock! Why do local bookstores not want to carry this book? I am so tired of seeing nothing but "trekky" and "gamer" books in the speculative fiction section and complaints to the bookstore do nothing. Thank God for Amazon!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not bad for a first attempt
Review: For a first novel wetting its toes into the realm of fantasy this book is not too bad an attempt though I have to admit it is borderline fantasy in certain areas. I agree with one reviewer that some of the characters could do with having their mouths washed out with soap (and I am no prude) but other than that it was pretty good. The characters (thought overtly vulgar when there was no need to be) were well portrayed, and the plot interesting enough to keep you turning the pages. The book leads you into an integrated modern society where human and elves live side-side though not always in harmony. Enter Rosie Lavine, a jaded PI who is hired by a Rock Group's official groupie, Candy Cayne (no joke here folks) to find out who might be trying to kill the lead singer of a Elf Rock Group called Cold Iron. At first Rosie thinks it is all a piece of Rosie's drug induced imagination but when she is warned off by a group of professional thugs she changes her mind and immerses herself into the bizarre world of sex, drugs and Elf Hard Rock Music. Attracted to Jorandel, the sexy but degenerated lead singer, Rosie is on a roller coaster ride of a lifetime and it's not a pleasant experience. Haunted by her own demons, mainly from her childhood, Rosie lurches from clue to clue in a desperate bid to find out who wants the charismatic Jorandel dead. There are an assortment of other characters that thread in and out of the story as it wound its way to its climax, but it was Rosie and Candy who kept me turning the pages, as well the destructive relationship taking place between Rosie and Jorandel, played out in the sordid world of Elf Hard Rock music. I did enjoy the book but I feel it could have been so much more. All the same for a first attempt into fantasy Ms Michaels didn't do too bad a job really.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Not bad for a first attempt
Review: For a first novel wetting its toes into the realm of fantasy this book is not too bad an attempt though I have to admit it is borderline fantasy in certain areas. I agree with one reviewer that some of the characters could do with having their mouths washed out with soap (and I am no prude) but other than that it was pretty good. The characters (thought overtly vulgar when there was no need to be) were well portrayed, and the plot interesting enough to keep you turning the pages. The book leads you into an integrated modern society where human and elves live side-side though not always in harmony. Enter Rosie Lavine, a jaded PI who is hired by a Rock Group's official groupie, Candy Cayne (no joke here folks) to find out who might be trying to kill the lead singer of a Elf Rock Group called Cold Iron. At first Rosie thinks it is all a piece of Rosie's drug induced imagination but when she is warned off by a group of professional thugs she changes her mind and immerses herself into the bizarre world of sex, drugs and Elf Hard Rock Music. Attracted to Jorandel, the sexy but degenerated lead singer, Rosie is on a roller coaster ride of a lifetime and it's not a pleasant experience. Haunted by her own demons, mainly from her childhood, Rosie lurches from clue to clue in a desperate bid to find out who wants the charismatic Jorandel dead. There are an assortment of other characters that thread in and out of the story as it wound its way to its climax, but it was Rosie and Candy who kept me turning the pages, as well the destructive relationship taking place between Rosie and Jorandel, played out in the sordid world of Elf Hard Rock music. I did enjoy the book but I feel it could have been so much more. All the same for a first attempt into fantasy Ms Michaels didn't do too bad a job really.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Really unique and enjoyable
Review: For the most part, books about people from magical lands coming to earth don't seem to work for me. Afterall, what's so great about normal old earth companred with a land of elves, dwarves and the occasional dragon?

It works pretty well in COLD IRON by Melisa Michaels. The concept is that elves from Fairie had grown tired of the homeland and with their exceptional musical skills, travel to earth to become musicians. Once such band is COLD IRON. When a girl comes into the office of private investigator Rose Lavine claiming that someone's trying to kill the lead singer of COLD IRON, Lavine reluctantly agrees to help.

This book isn't your typical fantasy with a culturally diverse band of strangers on a magical quest. So if you've been looking for something a little different, then maybe COLD IRON is for you.

Casey Thomaston

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A wonderful, complicated, compelling book!
Review: I can't for a minute understand why some of the other reviewers didn't like this book. Sure, it isn't traditional fantasy, though it does have elves. Sure, it isn't Tolkein. It is a tough, contemporary, urban fantasy novel with a very strong mystery. Though its characters are not always (even usually) admirable, COLD IRON is absolutely compelling, with exceptionally strong narration and enough plot twists to make even the most experienced mystery fan (like myself) happy.

This is not a story about happy woodland creatures flitting among the trees; this is a story of hardened people, of hopes and dreams, of the horrible decadence of (some) rock bands. The magic and even the existence of the elves does not need to be explained by Ms. Michaels. They are woven seamlessly into contemporary society and are utterly believeable in the framework of this novel. The subculture that Ms. Michaels has created works - that's all that is important, not how it got to be that way. It just is. You believe it.

Even as you may not respect or agree with some of the decisions made by the characters, their choices are within character and hold together. The elfrock musicians are certainly not put forth to be emulated, but they can be studied and understood. We don't have to like all of them, but we have to believe that they could - and do - exist in the world that Ms. Michaels has created. In my eyes, that is high praise indeed.

I heartily recommend COLD IRON. It definitely is not high fantasy, but is an interesting and compelling book with a great deal going on beneath the surface. Above all, this book is engaging and entertaining! Isn't that what we look for when we read?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Engrossing and sometimes just plain gross
Review: I don't know whether to love this book or hate it. Foremost, I would clarify that this really isn't a fantasy novel. It promises elves, but it only delivers a murder mystery with a couple plot thickeners you couldn't get using human laws. Elves and elfrock is never really explained. Oh, it's talked about in great detail, but the author never comes out in plain English to tell us exactly how Elves ever come to associate with humans, or other things most people will wonder about. This tendency is also a virtue, as we slowly surmise why the main character is afraid of Christmas.

The characters in this book are repulsive, often idiotic, and yet strangely fascinating. Proof of this is that I read the whole book, and no one was holding me at gunpoint. The main character, Rosie, makes so many stupid mistakes in the first seven chapters that you really can't believe she's the private investigator we're supposed to believe she is. The story is thick is drawn out almost to the point of melodrama - every possibility is explored in almost painful depth, so that you feel the events take place over several months instead of a week. Most of the characters are complete, but largely unlikable. I didn't like them, and yet I couldn't stop watching them, to see what they would do next. A few exceptions would be the characters of Candy, a ditzy but generous groupie who hires Rosie in the first place, Killer, the drummer who slowly becomes a main character, and his mom, Vyla, who is somewhat typecasted but a pleasant change from the oversexed, overdrugged world we are presented in most of the book. I was dismayed by the amount of drug abuse in this book, and the fight scenes tended to get redundant. Still, the conclusion left me with just the right amount of satisfaction without delivering a sappy ending.

This book was good, but not excellent, and exhaustive in details. If you don't expect to like the characters, but you like character studies, you might enjoy it.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Wonderful Surprise
Review: I stumbled upon this book by accident while looking for a new author. I was pleasantly surprised by the characters and the story. After finishing this book I went looking for other books by the same author and found Sister to the Rain. Both Cold Iron and Sister to the Rain are good stories that will keep you entertained for hours. I especially like the inclusion of the elves into our world. Not the typical fantasy novel. I hope there will be more books in this series. Once I get to "know" a character I can't wait to visit them again.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A Wonderful Surprise
Review: I stumbled upon this book by accident while looking for a new author. I was pleasantly surprised by the characters and the story. After finishing this book I went looking for other books by the same author and found Sister to the Rain. Both Cold Iron and Sister to the Rain are good stories that will keep you entertained for hours. I especially like the inclusion of the elves into our world. Not the typical fantasy novel. I hope there will be more books in this series. Once I get to "know" a character I can't wait to visit them again.


<< 1 2 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates