Possibly the Best Monday Morning EVAR
If I have to be jolted awake by my alarm on a Monday morning when I don’t really want to be up yet . . .
. . . then this is the sort of thing I want waiting for me when I sit down at the computer:
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.
That, folks, is (I believe) my first-ever Publisher’s Weekly review.
It’s starred. And the at the top of the SF/F/H section, too. (Page down if you’re looking for it in context; there’s no way to link directly to that graf.)
(It also happens to be the thing I had to redact from my earlier post; I didn’t realize I wasn’t supposed to mention it until the review itself came out. But I only knew the review would be good; I didn’t know what it said until this morning.)
So, yeah. A very nice thing to wake up to. Paired, as it happens, with an e-mail from a super-sekrit individual planning a different kind of interview for Midnight Never Come, who also loved the book. Did somebody declare today Ego-Stroking Monday and not tell me?
