Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan

[avrelia]

Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


1)I loved it. It's probably not a brilliant book, but I don't care – it has that magical quality of pulling me right in and not letting go until the last page. Your millage might obviously vary, but I enjoyed the hell out of it. I cannot say that I am a huge fan of Elizabethan time and fairies (I love them, but not with passion), which probably helps, since I cannot catch any historical details that might be different from reality. Nothing spoiled my fun. The language is simple and flows perfectly, the story is engaging and stays powerful throughout.

We are introduced to two court in England – the court above, the court of Queen Elizabeth Tudor, and the court below London in the Onyx Hall, the court of the Fairy Queen Indiviana. We follow the fortunes of Lune, the lady who lost the favour of the fairy queen and tries to return it – or at least survive. And we follow the fortunes of a young courtier Michael Deven, who
seeks fortune at the court of Queen Elizabeth Tudor, and - of course – his fortune gets entwined with Lune's.

Love is the main engine for this story, and the straightforwardness of it works very well. There is a fine sense of mystery and wonder, there are intrigues and power play, and friendship and loyalty and pride, all tangled in one fine mess, and in the end, the fae world doesn't look that much different from a human one. Oh, fairies are different enough to be instantly recognizable as such, and they are immortal and cannot abide the mentions of the God and the toll of church bell's, but they are still not alien. The author does a fine job of not really describing them – we can imagine them to our taste, but she does say that the fae we are reading about are close to humans in looks and manners as fairies can. There are others, less human-like, in looks and nature. Maybe we'll see them later.



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