This book was a little slow to get started but I'm so glad I kept reading. It was really neat to see how the author took many different threads and tied them all together in the end. Very well written and lots of political intrigue. ( )

This book does something I don't like much: it dates everything, and the dates are somewhat significant for understanding how things link together. Consider a case where one protagonist's actions took place in the "future" of the other protagonist's, then the story jumped back to that other protagonist's timeline; some mental gymnastics ensued on my part. Chapters, if that's what they are, were marked by an indication of date and location.

In novels that employ this kind of date management, I find myself flipping back through the book to re-check the most recent date, or perhaps some earlier date, to ensure I know what the current section's date means in relation to the previous sections' dates (which gets especially annoying with ebooks). The problem is exacerbated when, like this book, it sometimes jumps around in time a bit. I much prefer the more "organic" approach of just saying "Seven years ago . . ." or something like that. I got more into the swing of keeping track of dates as I got further through the book, but even toward the end I'd occasionally have a moment of wondering how much time had passed, and I also sometimes forgot to set a date firmly in mind so I forgot I was reading something from a decade or two earlier and wondered what the heck was going on.

There were some weird moments in there where a character's final moments of presence in the story didn't carry as much weight as it felt like they should, and there were some points where the descriptions did not come through very well. Some important aspects of description for some very significant characters didn't become clear to me until the climax. The early parts of the story felt a smidgen dry, and while I really found myself quickly attached to the female protagonist and invested in her story right away, her male counterpart felt a bit dull, lifeless, and lacking reasons for me to sympathize with him early on, though he grew on me rapidly once he started getting involved in the intrigue.

Somewhere in the midst of things, I really started enjoying the story, and got sucked into it. The reading got easier, faster, and more engrossing as the story built momentum. By the end of it, I read almost a quarter of the book in one sitting, while the first couple sittings barely hit five percent.

Overall, I really enjoyed this story, but I felt it was marred enough by some flaws to knock it down to a three-star rating. ( )

From a slow and somewhat tottering start (for me), this finished strongly. The second half of the book really gets some momentum and complexity going, weaving together all the stuff that was laid on in the first half (I just really wish Ms Brennan had found a better, tighter, snappier way to deliver us that first half). I remain uncertain about aspects of the way it's laid out - the "memory" sections, in particular, are baffling in their placement, which is almost always after you've found out in prose recollection the scenes depicted - but it all came together in a very satisfying way.

I am not especially learned in the area of Elizabethan history, but I have read a good deal about alchemy and John Dee, and I was extremely pleased with the rendition of him and Edward Kelley in this book, and that prompts me to suspect that it's pretty well historically pieced together throughout. And the faerie court is everything beautiful and cruel and whimsical and menacing and it's pretty much damn perfect. I was even pleased with the path of the romantic storyline.

Not to mention that this basically shits all over Mark Chadbourn's The Sword of Albion, containing all the subtlety, intricacy, emotional depth and ambiguity I (loudly) lamented the lack of in that book. And if Ms Brennan's prose doesn't quite resonate with me, it's still eminently serviceable and very graceful. ( )

The Fae have always been around. But even they can change. Humans are like that, whatever gets close to them is altered. So although the faerie began by merely jesting, swapping children, dancing the nights away, slowly some of the human motivations began to creep into their lives. And the humans don't stop, they build hamlets become villages and cities. Where once (and still in the deeper shadows) the fae played in Hill and Glen, now there is the Oynx Court most fabulous and unique of all their realms.

It sits astride, beneath, apart and contained within the City of London currently ruled by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth I - recently having taking power from her cousin Mary Queen of Scots. Such little trifles as human wars and tensions between nations matter little to the fae of course. But their Queen has made a bargain, and so at times Elizabeth requires aid, and the Fae are sent with a portion of mortal bread to sustain their masquerade at court.

Luna is one such, out of favour with her own Queen and not noticed by the other. She's tasked to learn more about he chief spymaster as the Fae could do without the humans learning too much about them - even immortal beings are susceptible to fervent religion uttered at them. However when she falls even further out of favour, she finds aid in a quarter she'd never expected, and then it all comes down to trust.

I'm not a big fan of historical fiction but this is counterbalanced by a very well done faerie world. Lots of beings lots of conflicting motivations, a good sense of time and the problems of humans. I'll probably read the rest of the series especially if they're set closer to our own time. ( )

I have had this book on my to be read pile for quite a while. I really enjoyed the Warrior and Witch series by Brennan and was excited to read this one. I didn’t like this as much as the Warrior and Witch series; it was just kind of slow.

The whole premise of this book is that there is a fae court ruled by a Queen named Invidiana that lies beneath the English court of Queen Elizabeth. Initially it’s not all that clear what is driving the story. We basically switch between Lady Lune and Michael Deven’s stories. Lady Lune is trying to regain the favor of Queen Invidiana and survive the shadow court. Meanwhile Deven is trying to gain Queen Elizabeth’s favor and make a name for himself.

This story is largely layers of intrigue and conspiracy (not my favorite thing to read about). There is a lot of history in here as well, which was interesting some of the time but started to bog the story down towards the end.

Additionally I never really engaged with the characters all that well. Lady Lune and Deven both seem strangely isolated and self-serving; they just weren’t all that interesting to me.

The story moves slowly, at the beginning it doesn’t seem to have much of a point. As things continue you can see that Invidiana is having a negative impact on both fairy and human lands and then the story becomes more cohesive. As far as the writing style itself; the book is decently written and flows well. I

Overall this was an okay book. The book is well written and the idea behind a underground fae court that drives Queen Elizabeth’s above court is interesting. However the story moved slow and was bogged down by a lot of the history. The story was also primarily intrigue based which really isn’t my thing. I personally won’t be reading any more books in this series; it just wasn’t that interesting to me. ( )