Reviewed by Gwenda Bond

The cult of H.P. Lovecraft can barely be called a cult these days. The Cthulu mythos has claimed solid status as one of those created mythologies that inspires the kind of intricate devotion reserved for very few writers. And people, it seems, can’t help adding to it themselves. Authors and other artists riff and critique, steal and modify at will. The most common Lovecraft tropes in the lexicon–the Great Old Ones, shoggoths, Arkham, Yog-Sothoth, the Necronomicon, etcetera–continues to hold a weird, tentacled mystique, no matter how many different forms it mutates into. References abound in board games and story cycles, comic books and video games. Lovecraft is everywhere.

Now Caitlin Kittredge’s The Iron Thorn takes the Lovecraft mythos and turns it into the backdrop for a rollickingly horrific romp for teen readers. Author of the bestselling Nocturne City and Black London series for adult readers, the book is Kittredge’s first foray into young adult fiction and the first in her Iron Codex trilogy. Teen Aoife Grayson lives in the city of Lovecraft, and we first meet her visiting her rambling, raving mother in an asylum. “There are seventeen madhouses in the city of Lovecraft. I’ve visited all of them,” the book begins; a memorable opening that tells us just what the author has in store. Aoife’s family, it seems, is cursed with madness. While most others must be exposed to the necrovirus and essentially “catch” it, the Graysons carry a latent strain that activates at sixteen. Aoife is slowly ticking toward her birthday, determined not to go mad, but not aware of any way to prevent it from happening. To make matters worse, her brother Conrad has succumbed on his birthday, and has fled. When she receives a note from him, she convinces her reliable friend Cal–who seems to have more than a little crush on Aiofe–to defy the city runners, leave their school, and find him. They hire charming, handsome, clever Dean as a guide, and set off into the underworld, a love triangle in the making, and in serious danger.

The city of Lovecraft and later Graystone, Aiofe’s father’s house in Arkham, are the two main locations (on this plane at least) visited during the book, and they are lovingly sketched with details right out of the city’s namesake. Run by the Proctors, Kittredge constructs a claustrophobic, authoritarian state straight out of a nightmare. The strong horror slant is a refreshing change up to the popular not-so-scary vampires and sexy creature boyfriends (and, in fact, may be an early entry in a shift toward more horror in YA). Here, rationality has become the unhealthy over-corrective to monsters and madness, bringing terrors of its own.

Aoife is a complex heroine worth rooting for–smart, loyal, and, possibly, doomed. As she, Cal, and Dean find out more about the secrets of the Grayson family, taking up residence at Graystone, she has ghouls to battle, fairies to negotiate with, and chemistry to manage between herself and Dean. The stakes for Aoife may be her brother’s life, Cal and Dean’s safety, and, of course, her own threatened sanity, but there are bigger stakes she must balance as well. As she begins to discover the powers that make her special, Aoife proves to be that most welcome of things: competent.

Kittredge is not afraid to play with the reader’s expectations. Her willingness to feint, to make us question a character’s likeability and motivations, only to then reveal something wholly unexpected, offsets a slight flagging in the novel’s pace during the mid-section in Arkham. Clockworks, steam tunnels, mechanical ravens, and airships–Kittredge’s addition of steampunk elements to the setting helps to make it fully her own, and not just a borrowed Lovecraftian milieu. Still, she’s not afraid to give us the shoggoth bites and creepy mists that the mythos’ use promises. Ultimately, Kittredge builds to a gripping conclusion that makes the coming sequels necessary and not just inevitable. Grab your goggles. There’s plenty more of this world left to explore.