Strange Devices of the Sun and Moon

Reader reviewed by Mairi

Unrest has come to the court of the Faerie Queen, and Alice Wood, a bookseller's widow, finds herself and her enstranged son Arthur caught up in it. A group of playwrights, including Christopher Marlowe, has heard Arthur declare himself king- treason in a time when Queen Elizabeth is the undisputed monarch England- and word eventually finds its way back to the throne. Alice Wood is brought to be questioned by the queen and her secretary.

I read a review of this book and, though I thought it sounded good, I went on to forget about it until one day I saw it on the shelf in the library. It has a very complicated plot, the sort that requires both flaps just to describe the premise. Still, the book is nothing if not concise- easy to understand and not overly long, being somewhere around three hundred pages.

This book is fantasy, more or less, but in many ways it is more like historical fiction.