“Fruits which that unknown orchard bore; She suck’d until her lips were sore; Then flung the emptied rinds away, But gather’d up one kernel stone, And knew not was it night or day”

In Toby’s world, it’s been a few months since the events of Ashes of Honor, and things are going well – especially in her newly romantic relationship with Tybalt. So, of course, something HAS to come along to upset the apple-cart. This time, that something is goblin fruit.

A druggy pleasure of the purebloods, goblin fruit is incredibly addictive to changelings and deadly to humans. With changelings now starting to turn up dead, Toby takes the problem to the Queen of the Mists….only to discover that the Queen is the source of the problem. To make matters worse, she’s exiled Toby. And just to kick it up an extra notch, she’s also arranged for Toby to be exposed to goblin fruit.

How to get out of such a shitty situation? A coup, of course! And so, with the help of the Luidaeg, and having discovered that the Queen is in no way a legitimate holder of the throne, Toby is on the trail of the long-missing daughter of King Gilad, aided and abetted by the badass Dianda Lorden (it turns out that a rampaging mermaid is just as deadly on land as she is in water), and the keeper of a magical moving library, as well as the usual crowd. What transpires is a book that kept me gleefully turning the pages until I’d managed to finish it in one sitting.

I’m excited to see what changes will be wrought in Faerie thanks to the change in local government, even while I’m nervous about just how many more times Tybalt will be killed (even if he always gets better, it still makes me wibble).

I’m going to have to space these books out a little more if I’m not going to be bereft on finishing soon…but just like that goblin fruit, this world is pretty addictive.