"You are supposed to free her." Liadain shook her head with a sound like the sea. "Then you would have been comrades in arms, bound by a shared adventure. It is powerful, here, to have gone through a story together, and the sleeping princess brought back to life by her swain? That is a powerful story." [p. 119]
Combined edition including Bomber's Moon and Dogfighters: I don't think I noticed the transition between one volume and the next, but that might be because the narrative is fragmented in both books -- multiple viewpoints, multiple timelines.
Ben Chaudhry lives in Bakewell and works in a bank. He's suffering some PTSD, having survived the 7/7 London bombings: he is not the kind of person who believes in the supernatural. Except that a faerie rade has just passed through his house, and he's seen things he can't believe. Out of his depth, he calls the local paranormal society, and is promptly visited by the handsome Wing-Commander Chris Gattrell.
Chris is a man out of time, having somehow been propelled from WWII to the 1990s. He's lost everything, and he knows that the elves exist: they're the reason he was invalided out of the RAF.
Meanwhile, a very long way away, Flynn is caught up in Elven politics, also completely out of his depth, and with no sense of when or where or even who he is.
It's such an interesting set-up: but there is perhaps just too much happening, to too many characters. Dragons! Aliens! Stone circles! Feuding queens! Shapechangers! Identity porn! Ecology! WWII Bomber Shot Down by Elves!
Some minor nitpicks, too: why does a two-week, primarily sexual liaison assume such significance to the parties involved, after so long? Why are so many individuals so ready to assume homophobia? (I know it is horribly prevalent, but still: seems somewhat out of character in at least two instances.) And I wasn't wholly convinced by the story arc and conclusion for one of the characters: it didn't feel finished, somehow.
A very enjoyable read but I struggled to remember what had happened to whom even while reading, and am now hard-pressed to explain or summarise the plot.
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