A Star Shall Fall.
Apr. 14th, 2011 11:24Happy Birthday, ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
oliviacirce!
Brennan, Marie. A Star Shall Fall. New York: Tor Books, 2010.
Disclaimer: The author is a friend of mine.
I liked the first of the Onyx Court books, Midnight Never Come, well enough, but I think the second, In Ashes Lie, and this third book in particular are even much better. A Star Shall Fall is also, quietly, a terribly clever book, and not in the sense of preciousness but in the sense that there are a lot of really cool ideas deployed in the book, so much so that one almost doesn't notice how interesting each of them are individually. But they're there, and they're pretty awesome; the Calendar Room in particular is wonderful--and terrible.
( A star shall fall into ye well. )
The book's title actually comes from Sir Isaac Newton's alchemical notes, which is fitting for a book that, for all that it's set in the Georgian period, feels oddly backward-looking in some ways: one of the many clever ideas in the book is its taking classical theories of natural philosophy as the basis for fairy science, and no one, perhaps, was a better alchemist than Newton. The juxtaposition makes for a compelling contrast, and a compelling story. I'm very much looking forward to With Fate Conspire later this year.
oliviacirce!Brennan, Marie. A Star Shall Fall. New York: Tor Books, 2010.
Disclaimer: The author is a friend of mine.
I liked the first of the Onyx Court books, Midnight Never Come, well enough, but I think the second, In Ashes Lie, and this third book in particular are even much better. A Star Shall Fall is also, quietly, a terribly clever book, and not in the sense of preciousness but in the sense that there are a lot of really cool ideas deployed in the book, so much so that one almost doesn't notice how interesting each of them are individually. But they're there, and they're pretty awesome; the Calendar Room in particular is wonderful--and terrible.
( A star shall fall into ye well. )
The book's title actually comes from Sir Isaac Newton's alchemical notes, which is fitting for a book that, for all that it's set in the Georgian period, feels oddly backward-looking in some ways: one of the many clever ideas in the book is its taking classical theories of natural philosophy as the basis for fairy science, and no one, perhaps, was a better alchemist than Newton. The juxtaposition makes for a compelling contrast, and a compelling story. I'm very much looking forward to With Fate Conspire later this year.