MIDNIGHT NEVER COME
Reviewed by Peta Jinnath Andersen
Marie Brennan
Orbit
iresias laughed breahtlessly, still trapped by Invidiana’s hand. “A body in revolt, the laws of nature gone awry. It cannot happen. Yet the stories say it did, and are not stories true?” One hand rose, as if seeking something; it faltered midair, came to rest below the unlaced collar of his shirt. “Not those that are lies.”
Much like Raymond E. Feist’s Magician series, Midnight Never Come began life as a role-playing game. “The Elizabethan segment,” says Brennan, “originally set in 1589, grew like kudzu; it sprouted backstory starting in the mid-fourteenth century and repercussions going all the way to 2006, and more to the point, it wouldn’t leave my mind.” [1]
From the back cover:
England flourishes under the hand of its Virgin Queen: Elizabeth, Gloriana, last and most powerful 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.
Two courtiers, both struggling for royal favor, are about to uncover the secrets that lie behind these two thrones. 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 alien and Machiavellian world of the fae? For only together will they be able to find the source of Invidiana's power -- find it, and break it . . . .
While ostensibly about politics and power, Midnight Never Come is, in essence, a love story. For, while the novel follows Lune and Deven, their service to their queens, and where their loyalties are forced to lie, it also explores the ways in which we love, hurt, and betray.
