Midnight Never Come

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 . . . .

A breathtaking novel of intrigue and betrayal set in Elizabethan England, Midnight Never Come seamlessly weaves together history and the fantastic to dazzling effect.

Read an excerpt from the novel

Novel News

My first-ever Publishers Weekly review, and first official review for this book, is the sort every author wants to wake up to on a Monday morning!

Stunningly conceived and exquisitely achieved, this rich historical fantasy portrays the Elizabethan court 30 years into the reign of the Virgin Queen, often called Gloriana. Far below ground, her dark counterpart, heartless Invidiana, rules England's fae. Brennan (Warrior and Witch) pairs handsome young courtier Michael Deven, an aspiring agent under spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham, with bewitching fae Lune, who attempts to avoid Invidiana's wrath by infiltrating Walsingham's network in mortal guise. History and fantasy blend seamlessly as Deven and Lune tread their precarious tightropes between loyalty and betrayal. Brennan's myriad fantastical creations ring as true as her ear for Elizabethan and faerie dialogue. With intriguing flashbacks to historical events and a cast of deftly drawn characters both real and imagined, Brennan fleshes out the primal conflict of love and honor pitted against raging ambition and lust for power in a glittering age when mortals could well be such fools as to sell their souls forever.

Also, the excerpting continues; if you click that link above and follow the "continue" links, you'll find one scene for Deven, and another for Lune.

Ordering

Midnight Never Come will be published by Orbit Books on June 9th, 2008. You can pre-order it now from Amazon US/UK or Chapters. (Though, as always, I recommend reading this essay to see why I advocate store-buying over online purchases.)

Acknowledgments

I owe a great debt of gratitude to the many people who helped me research this novel. During my trip to England, I was assisted by the following wonderful volunteers: from the Shakespeare's Globe Library and Archives, Victoria Northwood; from the National Trust, Kate Wheeldon at Hardwick Hall; and from Historic Royal Palaces, Alison Heald, Susan Holmes at the Tower of London, and Alden Gregory at Hampton Court Palace. (The rooftop scene is his fault.)

I'm also grateful to Kevin Schmidt, for the astrology in Act Three, and to Dr. William Tighe, who taught me everything I know about the Gentlemen Pensioners, and mailed me his dissertation to boot. He is not to be blamed for anything I got wrong.

Finally, I have to thank Kate Walton, for needing someone to keep her awake on a late-night drive to the airport back in June of 2006. It was the first of many fruitful midnight conversations about this story, and it wouldn't have been the same without her.

Music

For the first time, I have crafted an honest-to-god soundtrack for a novel: two CDs worth of music chosen for specific characters and events. I've done my best to retitle the songs in a non-spoiler fashion, but to spare those of you who would prefer to avoid even this much information about the characters and plot of the novel, I've put the track listing on a separate page.

I dearly wish it were possible for me to toss up .mp3's you all could download, thus allowing you to hear my musical conception of the book, but the RIAA would set its rottweilers in three-piece suits on me before the files were done uploading. The best I can do is to offer a partial mix of it on iTunes, but as not all the tracks are available there, it's very incomplete.

Images

This book has a much stronger visual foundation than usual for me, probably because of its real-world basis.

It started with the artist Avery Liell-Kok creating two pictures of Invidiana for me: one headshot (seen above) and one full-length portrait. She's currently planning a third piece, that I hope to use as a promotional goodie for the book.

I also took a great many photos on my research trip to London. It's an oddly-balanced set of pictures, for several reasons. First and foremost, I can't take pictures of 99% of the stuff in the novel because it isn't there anymore. The best I could do was to photograph some stuff like what was there. But that got hampered by the restrictions against photography inside Hampton Court Palace and Hardwick Hall; those were some of the most informative places I went, but I have very little to show from them. Finally, I also took a great many pictures I didn't upload, but they're reference shots from inside museum exhibits, and between the lighting conditions and the necessity of photographing through glass, most of them came out very poor-quality. So my apologies for the odd skew of the set. But those of you who have never been to London will at least have a few mental images now.