I don't even know what to say about Galen, the Prince of the Stone. He falls in love with Lune, the Queen of the Onyx Court, after seeing her only once, and stays in love for five years. He knows, or should know, that she will never choose to fall in love with him, as she would have to, but he continues to think that if he sacrifices enough for the Onyx Court, she might fall in love with him, which does not happen to fae. He trusts Dr. Andrews to help the fae even after Andrews cuts out the heart of a salamander while it is alive. He wants to be the Prince, but he never quite manages to fulfill his responsibilities until he gives his own life for London J'ai fini par m'arrêter et comme il est difficile de choisir quand on a l'auteur en face de soi, j'ai réduit le choix en demandant ce qui restait en anglais. Il n'en restait qu'un : les quatrième tome de la série Onyx Hall. Heureusement, ils peuvent se lire indépendamment les uns des autres. Vendu ; emballez, c'est pesé! Lune is also once again facing more battles - the London Wall is being chipped away in London Above, and as it disappears, so does the size of her court. And the Onyx Court has grown to increasingly distrust her ability to hold her court together in the face of this loss, with the danger of the dragon, and her own physical power waning. To make matters worse, her new Prince of Stone in young and untested. This is the second book in the Onyx Court series by Marie Brennan except that now I find that there's a book ( Deeds of Men) that falls between the first and second books which I haven't read. Never fear: I shall remedy this. To me, reading it that way, the pacing was mostly really good, though some of Michael Deven’s sections were frustratingly disconnected from the main plot — partly by their mundanity, and partly because Michael isn’t a major player or even properly clued in for a lot of the book. Lune’s sections work better because she is more aware of the situation on a macro-level, and though her goal is personal advancement, at least her eyes are open to the wider implications of what she’s involved in.

A Star Shall Fall is the third book in Marie Brena's Onyx Court series, which follows a fairy queen's reign and how it impacts (and is impacted) by the history of England. Taking place in the mid 1700s, A Star Shall Fall is highly concerned with the dragon that was banished during In Ashes Lie. When faerie methods alone cannot stop the dragon, the court turns to the great thinkers of the Royal Society to try to find a solution. 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. This book was amazingly written. I could tell Marie put a lot of historical research and thought into the story. She definitely did a spectacular job of writing the book. The descriptions were quite detailed which made it easy to imagine the surroundings and characters. I found the slang used by the characters made the conversations interesting and more historically accurate. I would recommend this for a higher level reader because of the large words and slang throughout the book. Younger readers or people with weaker reading skills might struggle to keep up. That the faerie perspective is more compelling than the mortal one probably should not be a surprise. The Onyx Court is the primary constant throughout the (surprise surprise) Onyx Court series - which in and of itself is an interesting structural feature. Most contemporary fantasies that deal with the world of faerie tend to be either portal or intrusion stories where the focal lens is a human who finds themselves caught up in the magical world. In those stories where a human isn’t our lens, we often see through the eyes of a faery who – for all intents and purposes – tends to be indistinguishable from a super-powered mortal.

The Onyx Court series contains examples of:

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. It begins with a conversation between two would-be queens. Thirty years later, Devan finds himself in the services of Queen Elizabeth (the first) and, more directly, her spymaster Walsingham. Beneath London, in the secret realm of the Onyx Court, Lune seeks to regain the favour of the dark Faerie Queen, Indiviana. Naturally, the path of the mortal man and disgraced fae lady are destined to cross.

There were too many plans which didn't work--at least seven--and while they were all used effectively in some form by the end of the book, that didn't lessen the fact that I had to force myself to keep reading yet another failure. It's also an intrigue book, but one where we, the reader, seemed to know everything that was going on, and it was just a matter of watching the characters figure things out. This would be ok if the characters themselves were interesting enough to make the story interesting, though I'm not sure they were really strong enough, for me, to carry the story. 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. Though Ashes was a little disappointing in consequence, this one really works. An ambitious tale and a pleasing triumph. Wonderful. Violence/Gore - Fighting/squabble scenes throughout book. Most prominent gory scene has section talking briefly about a dog ripping a young girl’s throat out and pleasurably watching blood pour out.The Masquerade Will Kill Your Dating Life: Lune in Midnight, Antony in Ashes, and Galen in Star all have to deal with aspects of this trope. 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. With her latest book, Brennan has moved from more traditional sword & sorcery to intricate historical fantasy. Anyone wanting or expecting more of the same might be disappointed. I was not. 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.)