The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

A Crime in the Land of 7,000 Islands Zephaniah Sole, 2023 Premise: How do you cope with horror? How do you cope when it's your job? How do you explain the worst things to a child? I read a strong recommendation for this book on a favorite author's best of the year list, and soon took the opportunity to read something a little out of my usual genres. This book is half a crime thriller, and half a completely unique work of mythmaking.  The story follows both FBI agent Ikigai Johnson, in her work on a specific case trying to bring a man who preys on children to justice, and her daughter piecing together the story of the case years later. When Ikigai traveled to the Philippines in search of witnesses to the man's crimes, her then-preteen daughter demanded that her mother explain the case that took her so far away.  And eventually she does so as a beautiful work of myth, in which planes are giant birds and boats are powerful turtle spirits and her mother is a warrior called by t

He Who Drowned the World Shelley Parker-Chan, 2023 Premise: Sequel to She Who Became the Sun . Zhu continues her fervent quest to become emperor of all China (while hiding her original gender). The Mongol general Ouyang still burns with his desire to take revenge for the murder of his family. Many other characters are waiting in the wings to interfere. This was an incredibly satisfying and fitting sequel. The most interesting thing, I thought, was that the first book was about gender and identity, contrasting Zhu's ambiguity with Ma's femininity and Ouyang's obsession with not being "really" male. This book is about bodies and identity. The relationship between a person and their body. That can include their gender, but there's more to it. Zhu learns to manage a new physical disability and struggles to maintain her troops' confidence in her, as many people see a physical lack as evidence of some deeper problem. She and Ouyang continue their strained, pain

A Long Time Dead Samara Breger, 2023 Premise: An epic romance. A sumptuous historical love story. A vampire story. So maybe you loved Fingersmith, ( https://bluefairysbookshelf.blogspot.com/2014/03/fingersmith.html ), but thought it would be better with overt supernatural elements.  Or maybe you like the themes of Carmilla and its relations ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_vampire ), but want a true romance, with hopefully some kind of happiness for the characters.  Well, have I got a book written specifically for you!  A Long Time Dead follows the life and undeath of a Poppy, a cheerful hedonist and (in life) prostitute, who feels drawn to another vampire, the reserved and serious Roisin. They cannot be together for several reasons, most notably because Roisin has sworn to take down her master, the cruel and powerful Cane.  Poppy is a delight. Her adventures through the societies of the undead, her struggles, her general good humor (except for mourning the fact that she can no

Fourth Wing Rebecca Yarros, 2023 Premise: Violet's mom is making her go to dragon rider school even though she doesn't want to and it's dangerous. But her sworn enemy is hot. Somehow these characters are not teenagers.  I tried, y'all. I tried to go in with an open mind. The writing isn't terrible, in that the pacing mostly trips along briskly, some of the description is fine, and the exciting bits are sometimes kind of exciting.  But MY GOD. The vapid characters, the complete lack of interesting or believable world-building, and the extremely predictable plot "twists" had me struggling to make it to the end.  You're telling me the hot rebel guy is actually nice, and also on the morally right side? I'm so shocked.  And then the narration awkwardly has to remind us that our heroine is 20, so we can stick in an explicit sex scene.  Y'all. I am not against sex scenes. And these were.... fine? Not terrible. But they didn't progress the plot or

Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, Book 2) Tamsyn Muir, 2020 Premise: Sequel to Gideon the Ninth . Harrow has survived the trials of Cannan House. Sort of. Now she must train to fight a monster that can kill the God-Emperor of the Nine Houses... unless nothing is as it seems. Man, this book is awesome, but it asks a lot of you.  The first time I read it, it was like a fantastic psychological horror movie. The book switches back and forth between the present-day Harrow and flashbacks. Only the flashbacks don't match what happened in the previous book. You, the reader, know that something is wrong. Something is askew. Is it in Harrow's mind? What does this mean? What actually happened then? What is happening now? The answers are wilder and weirder than I initially could have imagined. It's fantastic. The third time I read this book, it was as an audiobook, which made me slow down and really appreciate all the details and character beats. The emotional payoffs in this one are

The Last Graduate and The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, Book 2 and 3) Naomi Novik, 2021, 2022 Premise: Sequels to A Deadly Education . El and her friends cook up an audacious scheme to get out of high school alive, only to discover that life outside the Scholomance is stalked by deadlier dangers.  (Thematic spoilers for this series below, but no explicit plot spoilers except for the one implied by the title of book two.) So I liked book one, right? And from the title of the second book, I was pretty sure our heroes were going to find a way around the whole "every group of kids has to run this deadly gauntlet to escape the high school" status quo.  And they did, and it was awesome. However, it was really in the third book where this series shifted gears and revealed its heart. It isn't just about characters growing up. It isn't just about kids with magic in a dangerous world. There's no big bad guy to fight, although there are dangerous power players.  It'