Her characters are thoroughly engaging. The fantasy world of the faerie court, the Onyx Hall, which lies under London and mimics the world above physically and karmically, is lavishly depicted. Moral issues are identified, developed and resolved with due care. She also does a nice job of portraying a society in decline, a magical kingdom on the verge of disintegration. Lune, Queen of the Onyx Court, has vanished, devoting herself to holding the court together through the sheer strength of her will. I missed her character, and I think that loss is a major contributor to the darker tone of this book. Some fairies are searching for a way to escape, while others seek to find a way to heal the court, and the darker fae work to take advantage of the chaos. This time history is front and centre though she’s left plenty of room for development the story is constrained by the timing and movement of historical events.

Like Mythago Wood this is closer to my idea of fantasy and what I want from a fantasy story. I want a story that has clever ideas, emotional and characters that can be connected with and getting away from the quest stereotypes, though they of course have their own place in fantasy. The protagonists of the tale are Lune, who hopes to better her precarious position within the cut-throat politics of Invididana’s “Onyx Court” by accepting an assignment to disguise herself as a mortal and spy on the humans, and Michael Deven, a young Englishman whose family has recently been elevated to the gentry, and whose ambitions lead him to work for Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s spymaster. It is inevitable, of course, that these two should meet, and that their agendas should clash over developing events The difference is that Lune knows most of what is afoot, and for much of the book Michael is ignorant. However, once he is assigned to uncover a suspected secret influence on the queen, it is not in his nature to leave any possibilities unexplored. The one novella, Deeds of Men, bridges Midnight and Ashes, and details Deven's efforts to solve a murder and ensure that his position in the Onyx Court is filled upon his death. The final scenes are moving; as always, Brennan drops the reserve at the climactic point and lets emotion shine through. The way everything works out is well-thought-out, unexpected, and affecting. Particularly haunting is the scene in which we finally find out what became of the man who was Prince of the Stone before Galen; talk about the stuff of nightmares!

For me, the characters seemed a little weak early on, but in hindsight I think it's just because they were functioning on their own, towards solitary goals. Around the halfway mark we finally start to see the pieces beginning to move together and from then on I really enjoyed it. I do think it would have benefitted from stronger characterisation of the two leads, Devan and Lune, but by the end of the novel I had come to be rather invested in their goals.

I think that my main issue with this book it that it feels like a fairy tale. Now, I love fairy tales, don't get me wrong. They are beautiful stories and are amazing to retell! But they are always written slightly detached - you don't get right inside the characters, they aren't super well built and detailed. And that is really what this book was like. Everything was beautiful and lyrical and interesting and had so much potential, but I felt very distanced from the story. I could find much connection with the characters, because they were just instruments to tell the tale. They felt like the fairy tale characters that I described. I really wanted to relate to and love them, but there wasn't enough there for them to feel like real, likable people. My enjoyment of Marie Brennan's Onyx Court series has relied almost entirely on the strength of the basic premise, the diplomatic relations between the English Court and the Faerie Court over the course of several generations. The star-crossed romances and individual schemes left me cold. The ample evidence of well researched folklore and history was pleasing but not engaging on its own. What drew me in was the larger picture, the clever revelations of how the faerie court influenced the Tudor court, the English civil war, and the founding of the Royal Society. Reading of the effects of human accomplishment on Faerie society was also an engaging endeavor. With Fate Conspire s the fourth and final (at least for now) book in Marie Brennan’s Onyx Court series. These are meticulously researched historical fantasies set in London over various time periods. This one takes place in the late 1800s (the industrial revolution) as the spread of iron rail lines threatens to destroy the hidden Onyx Court of the fairies. Finally, after spending time trying to conceptualize my review of Midnight Never Come, I have come up with the perfect metaphor for how I feel about this book. I feel like a Chopped judge (I’m sorry for anyone who hasn’t stumbled upon the food network and watched the show). Not just any Chopped judge, mind you, but one who has been presented with a plate of food described as one thing and after one bite the judge knows that that description is untrue. In plainer terms: they’ve been fed a big spiel of crap. This is a very beautiful book. I say that meaning the literal aesthetic. The cover is super pretty, and the idea just appeals to me so much. Faeries and Tudors! This book sounds like it was made for me. And the faeries themselves were pretty cool - twisty and magical and dark and interesting. I loved reading about them! I wanted to know more about the hidden courts and the faeries that lived far from the mortal world. I wanted there to be some more rich world building and for this to be a big, beautiful, sprawling fantasy novel. Unfortunately, we didn't quite get there.The plot follows the struggles of Lady Lune, a courtier trying to regain the favour of Invidiana, lost after negotiating a treaty during her diplomatic mission with the sea-folk (who in fact are the faeries' secret weapon in dealing with the Spanish Armada). Sent out to the mortal court, Lune crosses paths with Michael Deven, aspiring secret agent in debt of Sir Walsingham, and eventually, the spark between fae and mortal kindles in a powerful, fate-changing way. In short, I thoroughly enjoyed this book – court intrigue, just enough historical stress, characters that I love and a version of fairies that I can get behind. Now please let me see more of the weird creatures, Brennan. It was the ending, really, which decided me to give this 3 stars. It was pretty much a 2 star book before then - and, as always, I reserve the right to change my rating at a future date. Marie Brennan has fast become one of my favorite fantasy authors. This particular novel, A Star Shall Fall, is the third segment of her Onyx court series, which revolves around the notion that a Fae (fairie) court exists beneath the city of London. The Fae court mirrors the mortal court above and the intermingling of the two has profound effects on the great junctures in British history. This specific novel is nowhere near as fraught as its immediate predecessor, which dealt with the period of history during which parliament struggled to seize power from King Charles and the great fire. In Marie Brennan’s construct, the great fire was not a tragic accident, but rather the actions of a malevolent fire dragon…Without giving much of the conclusion away, In Ashes Lie culminates with the defeat and banishment of the Dragon to a passing Haley’s Comet.

Here we have Marie’s entertaining take on it: that in 1757 the Faerie Court under London still exists, though diminished in power since the last novel. The exile of the fire dragon that was the cause of the Great Fire of London in 1666 (in the previous book) seems to have led to a more settled time in the court of the Faerie Queen Lune. As time has rolled on, however, again we see many of the cast of previous books now gone. The middle of the 17th Century was not kind to England. Charles I Stuart was a poor king; Scotland was in turmoil; Ireland threatened to revolt; Civil War tore the country to shreds over (mostly) religious differences, leading to the execution of Charles and the fleeing of his son to the Continent; The Cromwellian Protectorate led the country further into ruin; the Plague killed thousands in 1665/6; wars with the Dutch waxed and waned; and then the Great Fire of 1666 destroyed 80% of "inner" London (that portion within the old Roman walls) as well as a large chunk to the west of the wall. As this series has developed there has been change in both worlds, though it is perhaps the human world that has changed most. After the removal of four-fifths of London in the Great Fire, it is here that we begin to see the reconstruction and urbanisation that leads to the historic elements of London today. There is also the social reconstruction after the debacle of the English Civil War. London here is a growing, thriving centre of commerce as well as ideas. In 1588, England flourishes under the rein of Queen Elizabeth, but deep in the hidden catacombs beneath London, a second queen reins: Invidiana, the cruel, cold-hearted ruler of faerie England. Above ground, Deven enters Elizabeth's court while below ground, Lune is cast from Invidiana's court, and when the two are drawn together they must discover the secret bond that joins the two monarchs—and break it. Midnight Never Come is a historical fantasy which takes full advantage of both parts, spinning out a vivid story of faerie magic which is intimately bound by English politics. Intelligent, skillfully written, but a bit tied up in research, this is a solidly good book that never quite manages to be exceptional. I recommend it. I was also a bit distracted by the metaphysics in the book, as it doesn't make sense to me that faeries' souls and bodies are the same thing, and composed of aether. I don't think it makes logical sense, even within the world that Brennan has created.Second, I'm unfairly suspicious of novels involving fairies, because I'm always afraid they'll be twee. These fairies are about as un-twee as you can get, while still being very definitely magical. I particularly liked that these fairies are multicultural (a Greek centaur and an Arab djinn feature in the book), that they have internal politics, and that their interaction with the mortal world is a bit more complicated than them just having fun messing with mortals' heads. (Don't worry - they definitely have fun messing with mortals' heads. But there's more to it than that.) My least favorite of the Onyx Court books. I really liked the premise of this book, that of visiting the darker, seedier underside of both London and the Onyx Court, but I felt that the book fell flat. I was also surprised by how much swearing was in this book, because there is quite a lot, and I don't remember any in the previous books.