The Iron Thorn by Caitlin Kittredge

Aoife is a ward of the state, lives in the city of Lovecraft, and attends the School of Engines. Her mother is an asylum for  madness and her brother has run away after viciously attacking Aoife on his sixteenth birthday. The doctors tell Aoife (pronounced ee-fuh) that her family suffers from a strain of the dreaded necrovirus. This strain causes a person to go increasingly insane as the virus eats away the person’s brain. It is only a matter of time before Aoife suffers the same fate as her mother and brother. The doctors assume she will go mad just like her brother: on her sixteenth birthday, which is only weeks away.

Aoife is almost resigned to her fate until one day she receives a coded message from her lost brother. The letter tells her to seek the witch’s alphabet at her father’s estate in order to stay sane. Aoife believes the letter to be a ravings of a madman. If anyone discovered the letter Aoife could be declared a heretic just for communicating with someone infected by the necrovirus. In Aoife’s world the country is run by a group called the Proctors and that anything dealing with magic and monsters are actually different side effects of the necrovirus. The Proctors prize rationalism and science. If anyone mentions the supernatural they can be thrown in jail or burned in a public display.

But Aoife does not want to lose her mind so she leaps at the chance that her brother’s letter represents. Soon she is running away from the only home she has ever known. Her best friend Cal follows her to keep her safe. Aoife and Cal must must trust the riffraff and heretics that they have been taught to loathe in order to make it to Arkham.

But there will be danger along the way; monsters beyond imagine as well as the Proctors who are on their trail. Aoife will have to trust her crazy brother, and herself if she is going to discover the secrets of the witch’s alphabet in time. If she doesn’t she will lose her mind and the world as she knows it will die, forever locked away on the other side of insanity.

The Iron Thorn is a great read. It does take a while for the story to explain how Aoife’s world works. The author has taken many different genres and woven them together in an impressive way. There is a lot of steampunk and the horror of H.P. Lovecraft, but there is also dashes of fantasy. This world might seem incredibly different to you but if you give it chance it is well worth the read. Highly recommended and appropriate for ages 14 and up only due to the high learning curve of getting to know the strange and wonderful world Aoife lives in.