The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Sunrise on the Reaping Suzanne Collins, 2025 Premise: Another Hunger Games prequel, this one following Haymitch when he was a kid sent to the games. Largely about propaganda, power, and the difference between appearances and the truth. Oh ouch. This was a hard read.  If you read/watched The Hunger Games, you knew this couldn't end well for Haymitch in order for him to be a bitter, broken drunk by the time he meets Katniss 25 years later. But still... ouch.  The book, of course, introduced characters who did appear/will appear in other books, but not in a way that felt too much like fanservice. More like: look, here are the forces that make this character who they will be in the future.  From the start, when Haymitch isn't initially called for the games but forced to sub in after the name ceremony is disrupted, there's a strong theme about appearances. The Capitol spends a lot of energy appearing faultless - in video, dress, coordination, everything. And that pays off for...

The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (The Hunger Games) Suzanne Collins, 2020 Premise: This prequel to the Hunger Games trilogy shows the youth of Coriolanus Snow. Explores the impact of war, deprivation, and propaganda on the children of the Capitol - choices are made and paths are set.  I really liked this, but going by the reviews, some people do not understand it. I empathize with a reader who doesn't want to read from the villain's perspective, but some people seem to think the reader is supposed to always identify with the protagonist.  The whole point of this book, as far as I can tell, is that there were a lot of factors shaping the kids in the Capitol, but Snow could have chosen differently. Yes, he was exposed to significant propaganda from a young age. Yes, he was under pressure from his family to be a certain way and from his society to think a certain way. But the book makes a point of showing other characters who find themselves with similar opportunities, and mak...

The Electric State Simon Stalenhag, 2017 Premise: Michelle is traveling to the coast to find something important. No one can help her. Many people are dead or nearly so, hooked into a VR technology that gave people something so much better than reality that they were lost to it. Accompanied only by a robot, she reflects on her life and tries to avoid ominous forces. After not finishing the recent Netflix adaptation because it's boring, I found many people online bemoaning how bad the movie was compared to how good the book is. So I asked the library to send it my way when there was a spare copy. A few months later, here we are.  It's a really cool book, y'all. It's largely an art book, made up of these huge, eerie paintings, depicting a tech-heavy world crumbling under its own inventions. Lonely vistas overseen by abandoned towers or half-buried robots, watched by ubiquitous advertising, but no people. The images are accompanied by text describing sections of Michelle...

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 ...

City of Bones Martha Wells, 1995 Premise: Khat is just trying to make a living in a city where he is unwelcome when powerful people decide they need his skills judging and discovering ancient relics. Unlike the pricey fragments Khat and his partner usually deal in, could these relics actually hold real power? This is the first book this year in a project called: "Read the unread books that are actually on my physical bookshelf because they were cheap at some point." I haven't bought physical books regularly in years, but I bought a bunch when we first moved to this coast. I recently decided I want to invest in hard copies of things I really love... and I also want to clean any random detritus off the shelves to make room. So, I need to read the books I've never read. I actually started this last year, but I got almost 1/3 of the way through The Prince of Nothing and decided I hated it, so that book went straight in the donate/recycle box. This book will likely end up...

The Stone Sky N. K. Jemisin, 2017 Hugo winner - 2018 Premise: With the full history of the orogenes and the Earth revealed, Essun and her daughter each have the power to save the world, or to destroy it.  Powerful and beautiful and sad and hopeful. Yup, the end of this trilogy brings it together and brings it home.  We return to a triple narrative in this. First, Essun's story of survival without access to her full power (as using her power is now destroying her body and she needs to survive to finish the plan) and her attempts at reconnecting with the fractured community around her before she tries to change the world. Second, her daughter Nassun's story of trauma and how an abused child hated by her society might use unimaginable power. Third, the new story thread is Hoa's, flashing back eons to the creation of the stone eaters and the destructive Seasons, and the history of racism and genocide they are rooted in. The deadly geologic upheavals are in some ways just the ab...

The Obelisk Gate N.K. Jemisin, 2016 Hugo winner - 2017 Premise: sequel to The Fifth Season . Essun tries to figure out her next steps and we find out what happened to her daughter Nassun. It's been a while since I read the first book in this series, so there was a period of adjustment while I remembered the characters and the world. I think this is a worthy successor, but not as undeniably brilliant as the first book was. There are more shenanigans around narration (who is the voice of the text and why) in this book, which I found interesting, but not as interesting or emotionally compelling as the core narrative conceit in the first book.  It's probably important to note that I also read the first book while I was pregnant but not yet a parent. The violent deaths of both of Essun's young sons are revisited in this book, and I found myself keeping more emotional distance from the characters for my own mental health. This was a good read, but it does have a few flaws common ...

Firebreak Nicole Kornher-Stace, 2021 Premise: Sure, Mal has a weird obsession with one of the famous SecOps, but doesn't everyone? She's just trying to keep her head down and earn enough water to survive until she learns something she can't ignore. This book starts with the protagonist playing a video game, but unlike some books, this doesn't have any time for nostalgia or wish fulfillment. In a dystopia ruled by warring factions that evolved from corporations, resources are severely rationed or for sale at exorbitant prices, and the prevalence and importance of immersive video games (before power curfew, anyway) is clearly meant as the local "bread and circuses." The people are encouraged to idolize a small group of superpowered soldiers who fight in the constant war and have doppelgangers in the game. The plot kicks off when Mal and her friend and gaming partner Jessa are given some damning information about the origins of these soldiers. They end up hip-de...

An Unkindness of Ghosts Rivers Solomon, 2017 Premise: Aster lives in the bowels of the great ship Matilda. As a dark-skinned lowerdecker, she is constantly in danger from the people of higher classes who run the ship and the society. Then she discovers that an affliction suffered by the leader of the ship may have a connection to her mother's long-ago disappearance. This is a hard book to review for a lot of reasons. What's good about it is great, but what misses the mark for me personally threatens to derail the whole thing. The best part of this book was the worldbuilding, the characters, and the texture of the writing. I feel as though I could recognize any of these characters at a glance. I absorbed the brutality of the violence. I can picture the ship in all its complexity and horror. Most of the major characters are gender-fluid and/or LGBTQ and/or neuroatypical and/or suffering from severe trauma. Their complexity means that while they might not be "fun...

I would have liked this book more. Archivist Wasp Nicole Kornher-Stace, 2015 Premise: Every year, Wasp fights to keep the position of Archivist, the chosen one who researches ghosts. She will fall sooner or later, but first she finds a ghost unlike any she has seen before. I feel some guilt about this review. This book was on my list because I'd read strongly positive reviews, but I didn't remember anything about the premise when I started. The beginning grabbed me. We're dropped into the middle of a fight to the death, and only catch glimpses of the culture and world until Wasp wakes later, recovering from her wounds. I also liked the ending. I liked some aspects of the story in between, but I felt as though it didn't earn its implied emotional impacts. It didn't explain enough for me to care when twists came along to upend things. I didn't feel the payoff of the ending as much as I should have because I never fully understood the characters or...

Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler, 1993 Premise: The world outside is getting worse. Their neighborhood is safe for now, but it won't be forever. But who will listen to a young girl with a diary and some profound ideas? Wow. Now I completely understand why I've seen people referencing this book recently. The society in the novel isn't the society we have now, but it's a very plausible future on the way to a total breakdown. Corporate profit above all else, vast poverty, violence, and dangerous drug abuse, no infrastructure that individuals don't pay for, no social safety net for anyone but the wealthy. The main character lives in a walled neighborhood and records her thoughts in a diary. She is a teenager, but she recognizes that the world is not "going back to the way it was," the way the adults in her life hope. They have to figure out how to live in the world that will come. Part of her insight is practical, and part is religious. Th...

The Girl with All the Gifts M. R. Carey, 2014 Premise: Melanie goes to class with a group of other kids. She likes their teachers, one in particular. She learns a lot in class, but she doesn't learn why she and her classmates live in cells on the base, or why no one is allowed to touch them, or why they only eat once a week... This book suffered a little for me from expectations that were one hundred percent not the book's fault. I had heard a lot of hype about this book, but on reflection, I only knew two things about it - it's about a little girl who is a zombie, but she doesn't know it, and it was really popular. I extrapolated from there that it would be a psychological book, full of unreliable narration, twists, and theories. I thought it would be entirely or mostly from her perspective, that the adults around the character might not know what was going on, that there would be a slow-burn reveal, and maybe she was the beginning of an outbreak. It...

In the After Demitria Lunetta, 2013 Challenge Book! Book Riot Read Harder Challenge 2016 -  Read a dystopian or post-apocalyptic novel (actually this is both!) Premise: Amy is one of the only survivors of the invasion. She struggles to survive and protect a little girl she finds (“Baby”), until black ships bring a series of unbelievable changes. On paper, this has a lot of elements that I like. Survivalist narrative, alien invasion, post-apocalyptic society. But in practice, it all sort of fell apart. Some spoilers are necessary to discuss this book, FYI. The first section, which covers Amy and Baby's day-to-day survival and flashbacks to the apocalypse, didn’t really grab me. I didn’t connect with Amy, she felt flat and uninteresting. The story perked up when the arrival of Amber and other survivors complicated their situation, but it still never really took off for me. The ‘aliens’ were described as instant death, but weren’t often scary in any visceral way. I di...

Bitch Planet: Extraordinary Machine (Volume One) Kelly Sue Deconnick, Valentine De Landro, 2015 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Collects Bitch Planet #1-5 . In a near future world, society is run by the Fathers. Women who don’t abide by the rules - aren’t thin enough, pretty enough, submissive enough, compliant enough - are sent to the Auxiliary Compliance Outpost, a prison in space better known as… Bitch Planet. Oof. I didn’t expect anything less, but reading this book feels somewhere between a punch to the kidneys and the crawly feeling of an effective horror movie. Its masterful blend of tone and style evokes both exploitation filmmaking and old-time comic books and mixes them up into an updated space-age Handmaid’s Tale with a righteous, intersectional feminist rage. I shouldn’t have to say this, but this is for mature readers only. Lots of nudity, violence and language. The volume opens with a story that ...

Penryn & the End of Days (Angelfall, World After, End of Days) Susan Ee, 2012, 2013, 2015 Premise: Six weeks ago, the world ended. Or, at least, a series of catastrophes and an army of angels decimated the human race, which amounts to about the same thing. Penryn is 17. She only wants to keep her little sister safe, and her schizophrenic mom alive. When her family is separated, she will do anything to get them back. Even make a deal with an angel. For a series that, if you emphasize certain parts of the plot, falls squarely into many Paranormal YA tropes, this had some serious bite. The action was fast and furious, the story fascinating in its twists and turns. I'll say up front that there is a romance and I didn't hate it by the end, because it ended up tying into the plot in a really interesting way. If it had ended up being a romance for the sake of angst or for the sake of romance itself it might have driven me crazy, but I actually think all the relations...

Hunter Mercedes Lackey, 2015 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: The barriers between Earth and another, unknown place have grown thin, and humanity now lives in protected cities where they are safe from creatures of magic and myth. Joy is a Hunter, one of a small group of people born with the ability to manipulate magic and fight off incursions of dangerous critters from the Otherworld. She has been called to Apex city to train and work with other Hunters and meet her uncle, an important politician. But politics can turn deadly when a lot is at stake and Joy has to be very careful about who she trusts… To be upfront: is this sometimes a little like The Hunger Games ? Yes, yes it is. First-person, ridiculously badass young female character living in remote, hard-scrabble area brought to the ridiculously technologically-advanced and decadent big city to commit violence (in this case to fight monsters, not other tee...

The Spark (Extrahumans, Book 3) Sarah Jane Bigelow, 2012 Premise: Sequel to Broken and Fly Into Fire . Dee has grown older, but still feels lost inside. She can’t control her powers or her life. The little settlement of former heroes on the planet Valen may have finally gotten the government’s attention, and soon no one will have a safe refuge. In short, I don’t think this is a bad book, and big chunks of it were great, but overall I was left unsatisfied. Bit too much angst, bit too much dystopia in this one for me. Some great character stuff, but the very end pissed me off. For more details, read on, but Some Mild Spoilers Ahead. It wasn’t that I wanted the characters to solve all the problems of their dystopian future. At the end of the first book I got the feeling that the author wasn’t interested in telling that story. But I wanted something. I wanted one relationship to not fall apart or one character to not betray/fight/hate the others. I wanted some personal reso...

Fly Into Fire (Extrahumans, Book 2) Sarah Jane Bigelow, 2012 Premise: Sequel to Broken . When last we saw Sky Ranger, he had shaken off the manipulations of the oppressive government and was off to exact some unspecified revenge or justice. Or possibly both? This book follows Sky later as he deals with his past supporting the corrupt government and tries his best to protect the few other extrahumans that remain. I liked this sequel quite a bit. I liked getting more about Sky Ranger, he’s an interesting character. I liked the new characters as they were introduced, with all of their own troubles, and the return of some of the characters from the first book. The mix of superheroes and sci-fi dystopia continues; there’s more emphasis on the space travel and sci-fi aspects in this one. There were some scenes of torture that I found really unpleasant, but necessarily so. The book basically opens with a crash landing, Sky Ranger and a group of other refugees fleeing Earth cras...

Stand on Zanzibar John Brunner, 1968 Hugo Winner - 1969 Premise: A fractured look at an overpopulated dystopia. It mostly focuses on how the decisions of two men in New York affect events in two small countries on opposite sides of the world. I fell asleep. Literally. I literally fell asleep at least three separate times while reading this book, never when it was late at night, or I was particularly tired. So it should come as no surprise that my take on this book can be summed up in three words: Slow, Long, Boring. This book is written in a “groundbreaking” style that was appropriated from an earlier work of historical fiction. It consists of different types of chapters: some follow the main characters, some follow minor characters who may or may not appear again, and some provide worldbuilding. I guess the latter are supposed to feel like information overload, but really I just read enough to get the idea (i.e. the next four-ten pages are examples of future advertising ...

Broken (Extrahumans, Book One) Sarah Jane Bigelow, 2011 Premise: Broken used to be a superhero. Now she’s alone, living on the street, hiding from the authorities and her former friends. Michael Forward has a power as well: he can see possible futures, and he knows he needs Broken’s help if there’s a chance to save the child who could transform their world. Hey, an indie novel about superheroes that’s pretty awesome! Sign me up for that. The dystopian setting felt plausible without needing to know all the details, but the highlight was really the characters. Broken, Michael, and the other Extrahumans we encounter, like Sky Ranger and Lucky Jane, feel like true superheroes without ever feeling like copies of existing comic-book characters. Think Astro City-style, but a darker world. The description of Michael’s ability to see the possible futures is eerie and morbidly fascinating. Broken (formerly Silverwing) is a suicidal healer, angry and hopeless by turns, but capable of so...