Cold Iron by Sophie Masson

Title: Cold Iron

Author: Sophie Masson

Genre: Fantasy/Retelling

Publisher: Brio/Untapped

Published: 25^th October 2022

Format: Paperback

Pages: 154

Price: $19.95

Synopsis: An enticing blend of fantasy and magic from award-winning author, Sophie Masson. 

Lady Susanna lives in her grandfather’s castle, but not in luxury. There are no fine clothes, there are no fine chambers, and she’s not even known by her real name–in the castle, she is ‘Tattercoats’, a poor girl whose only friends are a servant of her own age, Malkin, and gooseherd with gifts, Pug. When an invitation arrives to a ball at the queen’s court, Tattercoats is desperate to go—how can Malkin and Pug help her get there?
First published in 1998, Cold Iron is an enticing novel of fantasy and magic inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Cinderella-like fairytale ‘Tattercoats’, set in Elizabethan England.
Sophie Masson AM is an award-winning, bestselling author. She’s written over 70 books, mostly for children and young adults. 

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In Elizabethan times, Lady Susanna lives with her grandfather – her mother, dead, and her father, off at war, his fate unknown. Instead of being treated as the lady she is, her grandfather dresses her in tatters, so she becomes known as Tattercoats, and she has two friends – Malkin, a servant girl her age, and Pug the gooseherd. Yet when Queen Elizabeth I. As Tattercoats is determined to go, Malkin and Goatherd must find a way to help her get there – and hope that she can find out the truth about her family.

Cold Iron was first published in 1998, and I read it over twenty years ago, but in the years since, my copy has disappeared. So I was thrilled when I saw it was being republished through Brio Books and the Untapped program to bring Australian classics back to life – and as they were written, as there is a note in the front of each edition that lets the reader know the original text has been retained, and are products of their time in terms of views or language that these days might be seen as offensive – as a reader I can appreciate this as it allows for people to decide whether they want to read something if they don’t want to come across offensive language or views. As this book is set during Elizabethan times, it makes sense that the language used fits in with the time – they did not have the knowledge we had, so for me, even if there is unsettling language in something, it tells me something about the time the story would have been written. I love retellings, and most of the retellings I have read are retold fairy tales. Yet here Sophie Masson has combined a fairy tale – Tattercoats – with a Shakespearean play – A Midsummer Night’s Dream and set it in the Elizabethan world that Shakespeare inhabited.

I was just as enraptured by this book as I was when I first discovered it at fourteen, and I think the Shakespeare connection was richer because since then I have read A Midsummer Night’s Dream and many Cinderella-like fairy tales throughout my studies and reading journey. It is a book that is magical and whimsical, and hopeful – filled with the delight of friendship and doing anything for the people you love. And there is a bit of a love story in this – the love of friends. Malkin and Tattercoats drive the story, and it is their friendship that made me fall in love with this book. It was one of the first young adult books I read where the female friendship was celebrated above all else throughout the story and journey to the ball at the palace, and that allowed the women to speak for themselves. I quite enjoyed that it gave the women – Malkin and Tattercoats – agency in a world where they usually didn’t and allowed them to drive the story. It showed that women across history had voices even if men tried to deny that voice to them. It is reassuring to read these stories and know that there were women that spoke up in times when they were expected to remain silent.

I think books like this are important to show that the world as we understand it was once written from a singular perspective – that of the educated, the victor, the man. The ones who took power without a thought as to how it might affect others, and those who tried to push down anyone who dissented from the ways that those who took power deemed to be appropriate. Of course, not everyone in these times would have thought this way, but girls like Malkin and Tattercoats would have gone against the predominant way of thinking and acting, and there would have been those who didn’t like it. Cold Iron is part of the Untapped program that is bringing forgotten Australian writing back to life – and I can’t wait to see what else comes out with them.

There were two other books in the bind-up I had that were also retellings – Clementine and Carabas, and I am hoping that those get re-released, as I want to revisit them, or hopefully, I can find them as second-hand copies. Sophie Masson has written many books I enjoy, and I cannot decide which is my favourite, but Cold Iron is the one that made me fall in love with her writing, and the one that helped me discover her books.