Hell and Earth

Hell and Earth is the second half of the story begun in Ink and Steel (post). I have unfortunately left this too long between reading and writing up (3 weeks? maybe more) so this will be briefer notes than originally intended.

This pair of books are very much two halves of a larger story - although there's some degree of resolution at the end of Ink and Steel (and it's not a cliff hanger), most of the plotlines don't come to fruition until this book. But this half of the story feels more like Kit Marlowe's story (where the first half was more Will Shakespeare's or perhaps more balanced between the two). Over the course of Ink and Steel Bear set up her world where the land of mortals (England as ruled by Elizabeth I) is linked to the court of the Daoine Sidhe (as ruled by the Mebd). Now Elizabeth is dying, as all mortals inevitably must, which threatens the Fae due to this linkage as well as potentially plunging the mortal world into the chaos of a succession crisis. But that's almost the B-plot, the main thrust of the story is Kit discovering what was done to him in his youth that's left him with PTSD and symbols carved into his flesh. It wasn't just petty sadism on the part of his tormentor, but is another way in which Kit is a tool that has been shaped to fit a long term plan to alter the stories that shape the world.

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