Midnight Never Come (Onyx Court, #1)

by Marie Brennan

England flourishes under the hand of Elizabeth I, last of the Tudor monarchs. But a great light casts a great shadow. In hidden catacombs beneath London, a second queen holds court: Invidiana, ruler of faerie England, and a dark mirror to the glory above. In the thirty years since Elizabeth ascended her throne, fae and mortal politics have become inextricably entwined, in secret alliances and ruthless betrayals whose existence is suspected only by a few.When the faerie Lady Lune is sent to monitor and manipulate Elizabeth's spymaster, Walsingham, her path crosses that of Michael Deven, a mortal gentleman and agent of Walsingham's. His discovery of the "hidden player" in English politics will test Lune's loyalty and Deven's courage alike. Will she betray her queen for the sake of a world that is not hers? And can he survive in the Machiavellian world of the fae? Only together will they be able to find the source of Invidiana's power-find it, and break it...

• ISBN13: 9781785650734
• Publish Date: 13 November 2015 (first published 1 May 2008)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Imprint: Titan Books Ltd
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

The premise for this book is absolutely amazing and I couldn't WAIT to get into it but I had to force myself through the first half before I was even remotely interested in the characters and the story. I enjoyed it overall but it would have been way better if the start wasn't soooo sloooooow.

[Rinn]

I received a copy of this book for free from the publisher, in exchange for an honest review. Also posted on my blog, Rinn Reads.

Oh, what high hopes I had for Midnight Never Come. Having read Anne Lyle’s The Alchemist of Souls in October last year, I was smitten with the idea of a fantasy Elizabethan court. There’s something about that particular era that really lends itself to the idea of magic and faeries, so when I was offered a copy of this by Titan Books I snatched it up. Sadly, I found it to be lacking.

I know I enjoy Marie Brennan’s writing – A Natural History of Dragons was excellent. But with Midnight Never Come I often found myself tuning out and not concentrating on the story a little too often – I just never quite got into it. The time skips were also really disorientating, jumping here and there very suddenly, and I had no real sense of how much time had actually passed in the story. I didn’t feel attached to a single character, neither fae nor human, and none of them felt particularly developed.

I had two main issues. The first was the name of the faerie queen: Invidiana. I had to say it so many times out loud to work out how it was pronounced, and still I’m not sure – any way sounds weird. In-vid-ee-ana? In-vid-ee-ah-na? I don’t know, and every time I came to the name in the book, I had to pause. And my second issue: when it is revealed whom Lune, the main fae character, has been disguised as in the human court, it didn’t mean anything. I hadn’t had enough time with this human character to know anything about her or suspect what was going on.

Whilst I love love love the idea of a fae court underneath the human Elizabethan one, this just did not work for me as well as I expected. I’ve given it three stars – but it’s more of a ‘disappointed’ three stars than a good, solid rating.