Midnight Never Come

Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I read this on the plane home for Christmas, and I found it completely engrossing despite a packed airplane and an uncomfortable seat.

The history is a little glossed, as other reviewers have alluded to, but had she offered the details of the lives discussed in the book, she could have easily doubled her number of pages. It reads as a fun supplement to the life of Queen Elizabeth I, but no one should expect that this novel will get you the full workings of Gloriana's court. Dissertations have been written about less. I suggest Alison Weir's excellent biography, if you want to know more.

This book is an excellent merging of the history with the fae, and the author's initial inspiration was the World of Darkness's Changeling role playing book. It was a fascinating example of a great story idea working in two venues (the game and the novel), and for fans of both story-telling vehicles, this is an interesting read.

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Cast in Silence

Cast in Silence by Michelle Sagara West

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Though this is my least favorite series that Michelle Sagara West has written, it's still very good, and I continue to enjoy it. It's shockingly light on the romance for a title published by a division of Harlequin, and though there are a couple of places I thought we were headed that direction, it never quite got there.

I feel like I am in the minority in preferring Severn to Nightshade, though I thought Nightshade was better in this book. Kaylin has struck me as painfully childish in previous books, and every novel seems to move her farther from those behaviors that annoyed me at the start of the series.

This book was very good, and I am ready to read the next book in the series. Should be out sometime this coming year!

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The Innkeeper's Song

The Innkeeper's Song by Peter S. Beagle

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Peter Beagle is an author I should read more of. His "The Last Unicorn" is one of my favorite books, as well as having been made into a cartoon that was in nigh constant rotation during my childhood. In fact, I still own it today.

This book had moments of startlingly beautiful prose. Whole chapters as finely wrought as any in genre fiction. But sometimes it was inscrutable, holding me at arms distance, a mean feat for a book comprised of short, overlapping first person perspectives. I wonder if this isn't a book too delicate and subtle for my law school brain at the moment, and so I am promising to reread it soon.

You know, this summer, or after the JD.

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