This was a sad one, ok now you think omg am I gonna cry? Haha, no, I do not mean SAD, just you know melancholic. The Fae have lived and loved London, but the iron has poisoned Father Thames. The railway is destroying more and more. The Onyx court is dying, iron is everywhere. And I do like the Fae, even if they have their share of rotten eggs too. And the Court is desperately trying to find a way to survive.... Here we have Marie’s entertaining take on it: that in 1757 the Faerie Court under London still exists, though diminished in power since the last novel. The exile of the fire dragon that was the cause of the Great Fire of London in 1666 (in the previous book) seems to have led to a more settled time in the court of the Faerie Queen Lune. As time has rolled on, however, again we see many of the cast of previous books now gone.

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. To convince the reader that the Human and Faerie worlds go together in a logical, well-rounded way is not easy and yet here Marie has managed it supremely well. We not only see the growth and development of London above but the magnificence and other-worldliness of the Onyx Court below. Brennan does do an amazing job of weaving parallels between the real world events with the affects on the fae and vice versa. The Onyx Court is intrinsically tied to the monarchy in London and tries to protect England and its people, but Fae courts in Ireland and Scotland (and their human leadership) contend for control. It's a political mess (sound familiar?). I guess this was the end then. A good conclusion to the series, and honestly, they do work as standalones cos there are new characters and the last one took place 150 years before.

Evangelical Christians are used to thinking that there is a spiritual realm that overlays the physical world that we see and that angelic and demonic powers are contending with the people who govern to affect the affairs of the world. This book (and all of the books in the Onyx Court series) take a similar view of the world, substituting the Fae for angels and demons.

From the celestial heights the arbitrary acts of life seem patterned like a fairy-tale landscape, populated by charming and eccentric figures. The glittering observers require vital doses of joy and pain, sudden reversals of fortune, dire portents and untimely deaths. Life itself proceeds in its unpredictable infinite patterns — so unlike the measured dance of stars — until, for the satisfaction of their entertainment, the watchers choose a point at which to stop." This novel concerns, first, the real life drama of Oliver Cromwell's Protectorate coup, the dissolution of Parliament by a disgruntled army, and the unlawful execution of a king, Charles the First. Few Americans know anything about England's 17th century civil war, which has clear echoes in the U.S. right now. So it's a very worthy attempt. But this book is not about the court for once. It is about Eliza, who is looking for her love that was taken by fairies. Also, she is in trouble with the law cos of the Fenians. I liked her story, her struggles, and how she never gave up. She really wanted to find Owen again.Firstly, Midnight Never Come is my kind of story – Elizabethan historical fantasy. And Brennan really gets it right. The detail and accuracy of this story is phenomenal. I can’t imagine exactly how much research when into this, but I bet it took more time to research the story than to actually write it. The Royal Society of London plays home to the greatest minds of England. It has revolutionized philosophy and scientific knowledge. Its fellows map out the laws of the natural world, disproving ancient superstition and ushering in an age of enlightenment. Brennan makes the wise decision of stepping a little away from Lune in terms of point-of-view. This enables Brennan to play a few cards close to her chest, plus there’s the fact that Lune has steadily become an emotionally remote character. These books already have a certain “coolness” or “distance” about them, and narrating this one through Lune’s eyes would probably exacerbate that. Instead, we focus primarily on the tomboyish sprite Dame Irrith and on the current Prince of the Stone, Galen St. Clair. Irrith snoops into the doings of the rebels against the Queen and starts to wonder whether some of their theories might be correct. Galen has an unrequited love for the Queen but is being pressured to marry by his father. The two of them eventually become allies and more. I enjoyed the solution immensely and found it an interesting use of technology, art, and their accessibility according to social standing. Since I fall rather firmly into the camp of “art should be accessible and legible to most people and outdoor sculpture is rubbish unless you can climb on it,” I found the solution sound and far more stable than their first draft. 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.

Marie Brennan does a good job of portraying the time period in which the novel is set. She works that time period’s science into the plot in clever ways; several theories that have since been debunked are presented as true, or partially true, or true-but-only-in-Faerie, in the world of the novel. The characters, too, are products of their time. Sometimes they express opinions that will sit uncomfortably with readers. Brennan doesn’t write modern characters dressed up in period costumes, and I appreciate this even when it leads to a few moments of unease. In the end, the plot took me along paths I definitely didn't expect, which was a bit of a strange feeling but also kind of refreshing. There are some interesting ideas and I feel like a lot only came into it towards the end, yet it still seemed to make sense so no real complaints here. It was odd, but not unwelcome. As this series has developed there has been change in both worlds, though it is perhaps the human world that has changed most. After the removal of four-fifths of London in the Great Fire, it is here that we begin to see the reconstruction and urbanisation that leads to the historic elements of London today. There is also the social reconstruction after the debacle of the English Civil War. London here is a growing, thriving centre of commerce as well as ideas. Solid ending for the series! The dark turn the Onyx Hall took surprised me as it got into the Goblin Market stuff, but it was really solid, interesting, awesome, and I enjoyed reading it. I was expecting more of the usual from the Victorian era. The focus on the working poor, Whitechapel, factory work, the Fenians... it was entirely unexpected and awesome.Overall, the tone is different from Midnight Never Come but Brennen takes that foundation and expands on it focusing in on historical events but also fleshing out on earlier characters and new challenges. It does require you to be paying a bit of attention, especially during the leaps in time but they are all flagged if you take a little bit of time. The book has a slow build and stuff didn't really seem to be really interesting until the last, like, 25% of the book.

Though Ashes was a little disappointing in consequence, this one really works. An ambitious tale and a pleasing triumph. Wonderful.England flourishes under the hand of its Virgin Queen: Elizabeth, Gloriana, last and most powerful of the Tudor monarchs. Plausible Deniability: The fae are generally very careful to stay hidden from most mortal eyes, and the author put a ton of work into getting all the historical details right, ensuring that for all the readers know, this could have happened in our world. Until the end of Fate, that is, when the masquerade gets broken in spectacular fashion. 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.