The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

One Corpse Too Many (The Cadfael Chronicles, Book Two) Ellis Peters, 1979 Cadfael, Episode One: One Corpse Too Many 1994 http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107746/  This is a fun book, and a fantastic adaptation. I had just gotten to this volume when the first season of Cadfael adaptations appeared on Netflix, so I wanted to talk about both. Premise: The quiet life of Shrewsbury is interrupted when the front line of the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maud arrives in the town. Between battles, escaping rebels, hidden treasures and aspiring romances, for a while it seems the only person who cares about finding the killer of a mysteriously murdered young man is Brother Cadfael. I didn't love this book as wholeheartedly as I did the first volume, but I did enjoy it quite a bit. Cadfael runs up against Hugh Beringer, a younger man who may be as clever as he is, and the two spend most of the book trying to outwit each other and decode each other's motives. I ad...

(Last year's haul) We're getting awfully close to the grandest geek holiday of the year: FREE COMIC BOOK DAY! Are you ready? Are you excited? May 5, 2012! It's the tenth anniversary of the first FCBD! WOO! But Lindsay , you say, I'm not a comic reader. Well, you could be. Graphic novels can be had on the cheap, digital comics are on the rise, the indie and small publisher scene is great right now, comics adapted from or spinning out of novel series are still pretty popular, and big-budget movies and stellar animation continue to spread the love for superhero stories. Is there a place near me participating?  You can check the widget in the sidebar here: http://www.freecomicbookday.com although not all shops participating are in the widget. Or use Google to find your local comic shop and see if they have a website or give them a call to find out about events. But I don't know anything about comics, and my local shop only gives away one or two free ...

Locke & Key Volume 1: Welcome to Lovecraft Writer: Joe Hill, Artist: Gabriel Rodriguez, Colors: Jay Fotos Premise: Tyler, Kinsey and Bode are the Locke kids. They live in California. Or they did, until tragedy befell their family. Now they're moving to Lovecraft Massachusetts, to live in Keyhouse. Keyhouse is full of secrets, though, and some danger can follow you across the country, or across time... This is a scary, creepy thriller in comic form, although I actually think I was a little spoiled by reading the Free Comic Book Day offering from this series last year. Because that meant I knew going in about the magic keys of Keyhouse, that lead to different places, or powers, or more. This volume is building the human story, so it takes a little while to get to most of the explicitly paranormal stuff. It's interesting, but it's also bloody, gruesome, and full of broken people who make me a bit heartsick to read about. I liked the pacing, overall, and I like...

A Canticle for Leibowitz Walter M. Miller, Jr., 1960 Hugo Winning Novel -1961 Premise: It's the future, and it is a dark time. After a catastrophe known as the Flame Deluge, civilization was crushed back to the Dark Ages. Almost literally, in fact, since the only group of people trying to preserve the knowledge of the past for a future generation is an order of monks. They are devoted to an engineer known as Saint Leibowitz, who was martyred in the defense of books. This book follows three different generations of the Order, and examines the world they struggle to survive in. I really enjoyed large swaths of this novel, but in the end I didn't find it fully narratively satisfying. The novel was adapted from three short stories, and each section ends rather abruptly and doesn't connect as much to the others as I wish it did. The sections take place hundreds of years apart, so this is more a story of the sweep of history than of any one character. The first two...

Batman: No Man's Land: Volume 1 Various authors and artists, 2011 Original Issues were released in 1999 Premise: Collects 21 Issues under 7 different titles that were part of the No Man's Land crossover. See Issue List at the end of the review. Gotham has been struck by a massive earthquake. Despite the efforts of Bruce Wayne, the government has decided to pull out of the city and evacate the population. Of course, not everyone leaves. These are the stories of those who stayed in No Man's Land. For starters: yes, the premise is fairly silly. Furthermore, Batman is made somewhat ineffectual right at the start in what felt like a rather arbitrary manner, and I was often frustrated at him doing awkwardly dumb things in order to draw out the drama. However, this mostly isn't a book about Batman, and that's just fine. The main stories revolve around Barbara Gordon (Oracle), the Gotham police, Helena Bertenelli (Huntress), Azrael, and the villains of Gotham...

This week: two titles that have a good handle on the balance between humor, drama and action. This post is half me just catching up, thanks to a back issue sale that netted me the entire Ray miniseries. Wolverine and the X-Men #9 was new in stores today (4/18/12), while The Ray came out over winter/early spring. The Ray #1-4 (4 issue miniseries) Writers: Justin Gray & Jimmy Palmiotti, Penciller: Jamal Igle, Inker: Rich Perrotta, Colorist: Guy Major I had heard good things about this series, but I wasn't convinced enough to pick it up until I saw some excerpts online a few weeks ago. I'm pretty glad I did. It's a cute series, with likable characters and a smart sense of humor. It does feel a little copy-pasted from the great pre-reboot Blue Beetle run , but since what it's copying is a minority hero with a good heart and a down-to-earth sense of heroics, who has friends and parents that are both plausible and entertaining, I think I'm okay with that....

The Wizard Hunters (The Fall of Ile-Rien, Book One) Martha Wells, 2003 Premise: Tremaine lives in a world at war. Her home, the nation of Ile-Rien, has been besiged for years by the people known to them as the Gardier. They come in airships to bomb the cities, can disable engines and mechanisms from afar, and nothing Rien's highly educated sorcerers have come up with has been able to defend them. Somewhere both close and very far away, Ilias and Giliead live in a fishing village. There are indications that a wizard may be operating on the Isle of Storms, and they go to investigate. They are ready to kill, since of course all wizards are corrupt and insane. Tremaine's heirloom, a mysterious sphere, holds the key to a spell that will change the course of the war and bring two very different cultures face to face. Now this is fabulous world-building. Ile-Rien is at a vaguely late-Victorian level of technology, plus some very civilized magic. Sypria is at a medieval level...

With my pull list shrinking, I'm covering one book that came out today and a couple that I bought a week or two ago, but didn't review at the time. Important Note: Both these books are awesome, but Princeless is suitable for All Ages and Saga is absolutely for Mature Audiences.  Saga #2 was new in stores on 4/11/12 Princeless #4 Story: Jeremy Whitley, Art: M. Goodman I wanted to make sure I took a minute to mention that I loved this last issue of the Princeless mini, even though my local store failed me and didn't have it the week it was supposed to come out. Did I wish there was just a little bit more story in these four issues? Yes. Will I still recommend the collection to everyone? Absolutely! The new friendship between Adrienne and Bedelia gets a lot more play here; I love that Bedelia is an ongoing character, I wasn't sure whether she was just introduced for Issue 3. Their relationship has a lot of potential to be awesome. Adrienne's mother g...

Reamde Neal Stephenson, 2011 Premise: Richard Forthrast used to be a drug smuggler, but these days, he's made his fortune in video games. At a family reunion, he decides to give his intelligent adoptive niece Zula a job in his company. Zula's boyfriend Peter gets involved with some serious identity theft, when his work is infected with a virus related to the MMORPG Zula works on. That's how the Russian mob gets involved. Communities of Chinese gold farmers, international terrorists and British spies all get involved later, as events spin further and further out of control, until Zula, Richard, their family and their new friends must face danger and death to try to save each other. This is an action movie in prose form. As such, I quite enjoyed it. It's tense and brisk; I had trouble putting the book down. It has far fewer info-dumping digressions than most of Stephenson's work, and in my opinion this is a good thing. (Not that I don't enjoy many of ...

Starship Troopers Robert A. Heinlein, 1959 Hugo Winner - 1960 Premise: Johnny Rico wants to be a citizen, which means he has to join the military. Over his parents' objections, he enlists. He is placed in the Mobile Infantry, and learns to operate power armor, just in time for the human race to be faced with interstellar war. I have a slightly complex relationship with this book, as I think many people do. I enjoy it as early military Sci-fi, I enjoy the action, I enjoy the world. The politics I think are a little slow. Not that the questions raised are uninteresting, or that I don't sympathize with some of the conclusions posed by the book, but whenever the scene turns into a didactic monologue, the pace of reading just slows to a slog. It's a question of balance. I think there is too much monologue-ing and not enough dialogue, not enough questions that characters don't know the answers to, not enough action that affects the answers to these questions. T...

Bit bigger haul this week, but I don't expect it to keep up... Favorite Issue this week: Wolverine and the X-Men #8 All books new in stores on 3/4/12 Side Note: Congrats to the Princeless team for two shiny new Eisner Nominations! They deserve it! Action Comics #8 Writer: Grant Morrison, Artists: Rags Morales, Brad Walker, Rick Bryant & Bob McLeod, Colorists: Brad Anderson & David Curiel That... That was a thing that happened. Actually, I liked big chunks of this issue, but the bits I didn't like really threw off my overall enjoyment. Superman is super, Kryptonian, awesome: Good! Lex is a whiny little shell of a man, and not a credible villain: Bad! Gorgeous ending splash page: Good! Hideous art switch for 5 sort of important pages: Bad! So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm conflicted. I'm also pretty confused as to what was going on with Metallo and Brainiac; I'm not sure I got it all. However, the next issue takes place on Earth-23,...

Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin, Book One) Robin LaFevers, 2012 New Release! Copy provided for review by Netgalley. Premise: Ismae has been a pariah all her young life, marked from birth with a scar proclaiming her a daughter of Death. But being a daughter of Saint Mortain is not mere poetry, as she finds out when the Abbey takes her in and proposes to teach her to kill for the god. On her first major assignment, though, she'll have to balance the orders of the convent against her trust in her own heart and her loyalty to her young Duchess. What a delightful blend this was! A nicely grounded historical fantasy with a well rounded, kick-ass heroine, and just a dollop of romance when the time is right. Ismae is totally compelling because her problems are both personal and political. She owes her happiness and life to the convent of Saint Mortain, she believes in her work, but she has to suspect everyone's motives before too long, and whether the duchess of Britanny s...