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...

The Will Darling Adventures ( Slippery Creatures, The Sugared Game, Subtle Blood) K.J. Charles, 2020, 2020, 2021 I've sung the praises of K.J. Charles here before, but not in proportion with how many of her books I've actually read. It's a lot. It might be all of them. It's definitely so many that I'm not 100% sure whether it's all of them.  I just love the way she balances romance with well-researched history and adventure. Her romance protagonists always face dire dangers as well as emotional struggles. This series is a romance trilogy that's also a 1920s action-spy-thriller.  Will Darling is many things, an ex-soldier, a reluctant "war hero," a man with a rather large knife he knows how to use, a man who unexpectedly came into possession of a bookshop, and bisexual. Kim Secretan is a dashing, effeminate nobleman who comes into Will's life just when he needs a friend and ally. It's clear from the start that Kim is full of secrets, though,...

Two Girls Down Louisa Luna, 2018 Premise: When two young sisters vanish from a parking lot, a private investigator and a retired cop might be the best hope of finding them. (Content warning: graphic violence, discussion of sexual assault and murder, including of children) I borrowed this book from the library on a whim, based on an article that recommended it for fans of the show Broadchurch. Although l can see some superficial similarities and I think the book is well written, reading it mostly affirmed my previous belief that I don't really like thrillers. I was pretty bored by the first main character. A single dad and former cop forced to retire under complex circumstances, he's warm and practical, pretty uncomplicated and predictable. Alice Vega the PI is much more interesting. She's distant and analytical except when she's itching for a fight. She's good at manipulation and focused on results. It was only when l was writing this review that I realiz...

The Henchmen of Zenda K.J. Charles, 2018 Premise: Romance and danger abound for hired blades when everyone has their own agenda and a throne is on the line. A retelling of The Prisoner of Zenda . At this point, a new book from KJ Charles is an auto-buy for me, although I did pause before reading to quickly catch up on the source material. The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) is a pulp adventure in grand old style, with a humorous if stuffy British protagonist who gets swept up in a scheme to save the king of a tiny fictional European country... by pretending to be him. Ironically, I had already read and enjoyed Double Star , which is a sci-fi retelling of the same. The language is fun and the characters largely enjoyable in their over-the-top melodramatics. The Henchmen of Zenda is the same story as told by one of the villain's hired soldiers-of-fortune, and it alleges that said British protagonist was a liar in several respects. It makes the politics more complicated and ...

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 ...