The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas. Book Review: Just Like Magic Sarah Hogle, 2022 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics, and I think I read somewhere that this one was loosely inspired by the Grinch, but it's not a super strong connection.   Premise: Bettie had it all. She lost it all. She accidentally summoned a holiday spirit. Now she's got a one-way ticket back to the life she wants, unless she realizes she wants something else instead. I'll be honest, I almost quit reading this book. I hated Bettie. She was awful. She was useless. She was a self-pitying mess of a person who wasn't ever in any real trouble, despite the terrible decisions she'd made and things she'd done.  She was a mess partly because she'd briefly been a child star, but I didn't have any sympathy, because she was also a washed-up wannabe influencer who was trying to scam her way back into relevance rather than admit to her (extremel...

Seasonal crosspost from Mainlining Christmas Book Review: The Kingdom of Sweets Erika Johansen, 2023 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics, starting with this very different take on the Nutcracker.  Premise: A party. A magical toy from a mysterious man. A trip to a wondrous land of sweets. Plus betrayal, torture, and death. Not a story for kids. So I have to admit that I was annoyed fairly early on in this book because it's a dark fantasy based on the Nutcracker, only it's about Clara's goth sister, and yet her name is NOT Marie. I mean, the idea of there being two girls was right there!  But no, the goth bluestocking sister is called Natasha. Natasha and Clara are twins, but Nat was supposedly cursed at their christening by Drosslemeyer, while Clara was blessed. Clara grew up beautiful and sweet, but a bit vapid, while Nat is spiky and awkward and reads books and learns the servants' names.  I was worried early on that ...

The City We Became N. K. Jemisin, 2020 Premise: A city is more than a collection of buildings and streets. It's more than its people and cars. When a city grows large enough, sometimes it... wakes up. Would this book make sense to someone who never lived in NYC?  I'm glad that I'll never know. Reading this book reminded me of everything I loved about my time in the city that never sleeps.  That is, when it wasn't giving me almost-literal nightmares about everything I hate about modern-day America. The City We Became takes place in an explicitly Lovecraft-adjacent world where when a city is large enough it incarnates into a person who is literally the spirit of the city. But this is a process, and there are beings from outside this dimension who want to destroy and consume the cities before they fully wake.  Because New York is New York, it isn't one person, but multiple - one for each borough. They are all fascinating complex characters who exemplify aspects of the...

Nona the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, Book 3) Tamsyn Muir, 2022 Premise: Sequel to Harrow the Ninth. Nona doesn't know who she is, but she lives with people who love her and look after her. There are many things she doesn't know, but she doesn't worry about it too much. However, time is running out for a little makeshift family running from the Nine Houses. I loved this book, once I realized it was book 3 of 4, and not the end of the series. I somehow missed the fact that the planned trilogy turned into a 4-book series while this one was being written, so as I approached the end of the book I was seriously confused for a few minutes.  Independent of that, this is a delight. First, we're switching subgenres yet again. Gideon the Ninth is murder mystery/science fantasy adventure. Harrow the Ninth is more horror/sci-fi with a lot of psychological-thriller twistyness. Nona the Ninth is mostly dystopian slice-of-life, intercut with the backstory/exposition I've been waiting ...

The Angel of the Crows Katherine Addison, 2020 Premise: You've probably heard this story. An injured doctor returns from the war and meets an eccentric detective in need of a roommate. You've never heard it like this.  I honestly forgot this was a Holmes pastiche in the time between putting it on my to read list and starting to read it. So it was rather delightful to realize that I was reading a most unconventional reinterpretation of one of my favorite things, by one of my favorite authors.  Dr. J. H. Doyle (Watson) is our narrator, as usual. The plot is strung together from variations on multiple Holmes tales, adding in a throughline about Jack the Ripper and some other original elements. For me, the repetition of familiar scenarios felt cozy, not like I was cheated at all, plus the old stories are all new again as we hear from characters who had little or no time to tell their stories in the original or find unexpected solutions to the mysteries. Plus, it's set in a del...

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...