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. Drug/Alcohol Use - Very minimal use of chewing tobacco. Characters getting drunk/drinking alcohol/visiting bars. There is a room dedicated to Opium use called “the Opium Room”. Characters using and talking about Opium. Descriptions of characters who have been using Opium. This is the sort of book which should be right up my alley - a historical fantasy, with Elizabeth Tudor, no less, and fae. The pacing of the first part of the story is slow, as Brennan sets up past and present events. Just as I was becoming interested in one group of characters, she would switch to another. But I have some familiarity with the period and with fairy lore and I was intrigued by the way she wove real events so cleverly with the folklore. Then, about halfway through the book, when the various strands of the plot began to come together, and when the personalities of the main characters were more established, the story itself became considerably more compelling. When I first discovered this book, I honestly believed it may have been the most perfect fantasy book ever created. Firstly, it takes place during Elizabethan England, one of my favorite periods in English history. Secondly, it is about the Fey, and I feel that too few authors write truly great books about faeries.

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.Finished it in two days of intermittent reading, could NOT put it down. What an amazing book. The character arcs in this are absolutely insane. Galen and Irrith and Delphia and Lune, everyone has such an AMAZING arc and they all conclude so satisfyingly and jesus. The book kept me guessing the whole time about how it was going to end, only it ended up going in a COMPLETELY different direction that I was totally unprepared for and oh lordy. 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.

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. Beneath Elizabethan London, there is a hidden city, where the faerie queen Invidiana holds court. The deal she made with Queen Elizabeth long ago draws mortal Michael Deven and fae Lady Lune, each seeking to gain knowledge and power, into a deadly web of political intrigue which tangles their fates and the fates of their courts together. England flourishes under the hand of its Virgin Queen: Elizabeth, Gloriana, last and most powerful of the Tudor monarchs.As anyone who’s come within poking distance of this series will know, that is not what I got. In Maas’ books, fairies are essentially super-hot, immortal humans with flawless skin and a culture-wide obsession with sex. These fairies are nothing like that. The majority of them see humans as paltry things, to be avoided and at best be used for entertainment (whatever that may entail) and then abandoned. But that’s not the whole story. The other side is the fact that, once given, a fairy’s love endures forever, long after the death of their beloved. A constant source of confusion to the fae is Lune’s love for the late Michael Deven, a human being. I loved the way Michael and his mortality had rubbed off on Lune. The subject of immortality (which is a concept that scares me to my marrow) is barely even mentioned in Maas’ books (another reason for disappointment) but in Brennan’s, with the plague raging through England, it is impossible to ignore, and it was interesting to watch the differing faerie reactions to such a grand scale of death. The main reason I didn't care for this book was Lune. I thought she was very passive. She spends the entire book in pain, meditating, just to keep the Onyx Court in existence, but never really acting. At the very end she sacrifices her life for something that isn't even the Onyx Court anymore. Lune is the main character of the first three books, and I didn't understand why she was relegated to such a passive role in this last book. Further, I was disappointed by the ending, as it entirely changed the Onyx Court to something else entirely. As we get to the third in Marie’s Faerie series (Midnight Never Come, (2008; In Ashes Lie,(2009))we reach the Age of Enlightenment in England, the time when historically science superseded superstition and religion. Marie Brennan is the pseudonym of Bryn Neuenschwander, an American fantasy author. Her works include the Doppelganger duology ( Doppelganger and its sequel Warrior and Witch, respectively retitled Warrior and Witch on later printings); the Onyx Court series; the Memoirs of Lady Trent series; and numerous short stories. The first of the Onyx Court novels, Midnight Never Come, published on 1 May 2008 in the United Kingdom, and 1 June 2008 in the United States, received a four star-review from SFX Magazine. [1] The Lady Trent series was a finalist for the Hugo Best Series award in 2018. [2]

I'm intrigued enough to suss out the sequel, but this felt like a complete enough story that I'm satisfied with it for now. I like that in a fantasy series. 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. There were too many characters, most of which seemed to given a name just so that they could be given a species, of which there were far too many--there really should have been a glossary. There was one completely unnecessary character, Galen's wife, Delphia, whose only apparent purpose was to continue Galen's plan of an Academy in the Onyx Court. He didn't love her, she didn't love him, and her role could as easily have been played by Galen's sister, Cynthia, who he supposedly loved but who he didn't seem to care much for--he couldn't even help her find a husband, as he promised, after she introduced him to Delphia. Brennan’s mastery of mixing history with her faerie world was tested in Midnight Never Come. But as important as the history was Brennan was free their to build a love story around the events without the being tied too strongly to fixed dates and events. ETA: There was one aspect of the writing style which was a bit odd. We would have 'memories' sections where we saw bits that had happened prior to the story, which set up the events we saw unfolding.

The Onyx Court series contains examples of:

I liked this one quite a bit; it was at least as good as either of its predecessors. I liked the genre-blending, I liked the characters, and I liked the setting. One thing I am glad of is that this story, despite being part of a series, does seem to stand well enough on its own. I would've been very annoyed had I come to the end only to find it be one of those stories where book 1 is really on setup for what's yet to come - especially since I'm not sure even my enjoyment of the ending was enough to make me want to continue the series.

The trouble is, I never got a chance to see beyond a surface picture. Few of the faeries were fleshed out - Lune, yes, but the sprite Irrith, the knight Cerendel, the giant Prigurd, the brownies Gertrude and Rosamunde and a bare few others were lightly touched upon, their personalities hinted at. I might have been able to appreciate this mysteriousness but the atmosphere was missing. The novel revolves entirely on plot and a forward momentum through the decades, from 1636 to 1666, and selfishly hoards its characters' more intimate natures, feelings and motivations. This would all be well and good, but the memory bits often came after Deven and Lune had themselves discovered those bits of the story. So it's like we get the story of what happened, and then we see it again from a different perspective. Some great touches are explored like Queen Lune and the long shadow of the Queen she replaced in Midnight Never Come and those events lingering influence over Lunes decisions. The real strength of this book is how deftly Brennan wove together the various scientific theories of the mid 1700s and the magic. I also loved how the fae and the humans who know of them strive (for the most part) to find a meeting point as the Onyx Hall begins to disintegrate and they cannot figure why.The first part of the book felt a little slow to me. Brennan takes us through the beginning of the English Civil War and the execution of King Charles. While the story is interesting, I find this series most engaging when we see the parallels between the human and faerie realms, and the faerie side felt a bit nebulous in the beginning. (By the end, on the other hand, you couldn’t pry the book out of my hands.) It's another of Brennan's genre-blending novels about the fairies under London. To illustrate that, let's consider the plight of the protagonist. Galen St. Clair is a young man with many problems. For one, there's a dragon hiding on Halley's comet that might destroy the city when it arrives in 1759. For another, Galen's family is running out of money and he has to find a rich heiress to marry, or else. Since there was a major focus on how the age of industrialization treated the working classes in both Faerie and in London it made for a nice change of pace, but because of that class division (or a character's perception of such) some characters would just end up stonewalling each other and nothing moved, particularly with regards to Eliza. This was less of an issue with the fae characters overall but then again they also had an obvious streak of gaming the rules and finding interesting and unexpected ways of bending them. Besides, steal-your-baby elves are universally more fun than hippie elves. Parts of the book were a bit of a slog however. It's not quite clear to the reader when the human events are mirrored in fairy, and when the mirroring goes the other way, with fairy activities shaping the human world. The book would have more emotional punch if the causal structure were made clear -- that would give us a better sense what the stakes are.