I recently (before I started blogging books) read Bill Bryson’s excellent short biography of William Shakespeare, and so I was well-prepped to enjoy Midnight Never Come, a fantasy novel by Marie Brennan, predicated on the notion that Queen Elizabeth’s court and rule over England above was mirrored by a fairy queen of equal power and far greater ruthlessness below, and that at least some of Elizabeth’s success was due to a pact with that fairy queen, a pact that now must be somehow dissolved.
In the end, I enjoyed the book very much, but I confess I wasn’t sure for the first few chapters. The characters seemed more like placeholders designed merely to advance the Grand Idea of the book than real, flesh-and-blood people. And even after it was all over, looking back, I still feel more like I observed them rather than co-habited their skins as they went about their adventures.
But the Elizabethan stuff was terrific (as it should be, given Brennan’s background as a scholar of that era), the concept unique, and the denoument satisfying. So I’ll recommend it without raving about it.
Up next…I’m not sure. I’ll have to consult my bookshelves.
