The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Nettle & Bone T. Kingfisher (aka Ursula Vernon), 2022 Hugo winner - 2023 Premise: Marra was a mediocre princess and an average nun, why does she think she can rescue her sister from a prince?  Of course I grabbed this from the library as soon as it won the Hugo (this review may be delayed). I was a little unsure when I got it. I knew the author also writes children's books, and I had the impression her other work was more YA. This isn't YA. At all. It's not inappropriate for kids, but it's a fairy tale for grownups, for people still finding themselves in their 30s, for adults struggling in a society set against them.  In short, it's spectacular, absolutely worth picking up if you have any love for fairy-tale-inspired fantasy.  I loved all the characters, I loved Marra's narrative voice, and I loved the magic. I loved how dreamy everything felt while also seeming completely grounded and tangible.  The writing is gorgeous. Lovely, creative descriptions that te...

Spinning Silver Naomi Novik, 2018 Premise: Miryem's family was nearly starving until she took over her father's moneylending business. Irina may be the daughter of a duke, but she's not pretty enough to be a useful pawn. Wanda is the only person standing between her brothers and their drunken father. All three young women face marriage, and therefore, danger. Magic only complicates matters. This is a sister novel to Uprooted , in that it is a fantasy novel which takes inspiration from fairy tales (most obviously Rumplestiltskin) and emphasizes cultural traditions which are often neglected in commonly British-descended fantasy tropes. In this case, the country takes quite a bit from Eastern Europe, and Miryem and her relations are Jewish and face discrimination and danger because of this. I really liked so much about this book. I loved the three stories and the way they combined. I loved the use and reinterpretation of fairy-tale elements. I loved that tipping po...

Down Among the Sticks and Bones (Wayward Children) Seanan McGuire, 2017 Premise: Prequel to Every Heart a Doorway . Jacqueline and Jillian had the kind of parents who shouldn't have children, so when they stumble into a place that offers them mentorship and protection, they take it...for better or worse. It's been just long enough since I read Every Heart a Doorway that I didn't fully remember the roles that Jack and Jill played in that story. I'm not sure whether it's better to read this with the knowledge of their future fates or without it. I actually think the way I accidentally did it might be best, where I slowly remembered the original over the course of reading the prequel. Either way, this is a novella about children whose parents try to force them into roles that don't fit, and how their relationships with themselves and others are screwed up because of it. Sure, their temperaments aren't helped by spending years of their childhoods in...

Indexing: Reflections Seanan McGuire, 2016 Premise: Sequel to Indexing. Picking up where we left off, with a wanna-be controller of stories in custody and a Snow White barely hanging on to reality. I enjoyed this follow-up just as much as the first one, maybe more. It has some of the same flaws - some plot threads left unraveled, some concepts reintroduced too often (a product of being released as a serial). The characters are more complicated and interesting, though, because it can build on what’s already there. After only one point-of-view section in the first book, Sloane takes more of a starring role in this one, and we also get to learn more about her past. She’s awesome in so many ways, and both she and Henry go through some deep internal questioning of their relationships with their stories and their choices in how they deal with it. I liked the new minor characters who were introduced in this one, and some other examples of ways stories are held in stasis or ho...

Indexing Seanan McGuire, 2014 Premise: Fairy tales don't stay on the page, but only the agents from one secret organization are protecting the public from their dangerous impact. Does police procedural/urban fantasy/fairy tale sound like the best mash-up genre? Then this is the book for you. I really liked the world, although I'm hoping there's more about how "the narrative" interacts with "the real world" in the sequel. The short premise is that fairy tales are real, and anyone who skirts too close to an archetype (abusive stepparents, etc.) can be effectively controlled by it, driven to carry out the tale. All of the main characters have narrowly avoided being drawn in or found a way to cope with fairy tales in their lives. For example, the first thing we learn about the main character, Henrietta "Henry" Marchen, is that she hangs netting over her windows in an attempt to prevent bluebirds from smashing into them trying to reac...

The Girls at the Kingfisher Club Genevieve Valentine, 2014 Premise: Jo and her eleven sisters lead a quiet, cloistered life in the upper stories of their father’s townhouse. Except that every chance they get, the girls are sneaking out to dance. This is a fantastic retelling of The Twelve Dancing Princesses, set in the 1920’s. It makes a lot of sense to set it then: The father is of an older generation, embarrassed by having no sons, and tries to keep the girls hidden to keep them “pure.” The girls are drawn to the combined secrecy and freedom of the underground network of speakeasies and dance halls. I really appreciated how much effort went into giving each girl agency and at least a little character. Jo, the eldest, is the main character, as she looks out for the others, and is the main interface with their father. And I’ll admit that the author, faced with eleven other young women to sketch out, does end up with two sets of twins that made me think of the way many of t...

The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus L. Frank Baum, 1902 Cross-posted at Mainlining Christmas This is a rather unique little... novella, I guess I would call it by the length. Probably one of the earliest attempts to really codify a “logical” life story for Santa Claus. I found it interesting, though, that even given a few animated specials that adapt this story directly, very little of this story has directly migrated into the popular conception of Santa. This could be one of the things that pulled the idea of Santa into the framework of “fairy tale” rather than “religious/mythic figure”, but I couldn't find out much about its original reception or effect. Eschewing any references to Saint Nicholas, the historical figure, this Santa is a foundling raised by wood nymphs and fairies, called Claus because it means something like “small one”. Most of the story is pretty cute: the fairies raise Claus, and since all manner of immortal spirits are his friends and protectors h...

The Farthest-Away Mountain Lynne Reid Banks, 1976 Fantasy Flashback is a week long event in which I'm re-reading books that were important to me as a young person. I probably read most of these for the first time between the ages of 8 and 12. I am very glad that this book held up to my memory of it. Admittedly, my memories of this book by the time I opened it had worn down to “I used to love this, and there's something about the mountain, and magic colored snow, and red flannel petticoats...” Such are the details that stay with me. If you missed this one, it's a sweet little book with a fairy tale tone, although with more down-to-earth characters than most actual fairy tales. Although she lives on a farm, the heroine Dakin almost fits into the archetype of a fairy tale princess, from before “princess” meant spoiled and simpering. Dakin is beautiful, brave, honest and compassionate, and she's also very pragmatic. She had a turned-up nose and eyes the col...

The Stepsister Scheme Jim C. Hines, 2009 Premise: Newly-minted Princess Danielle Whiteshore is still adjusting to life at the palace when her stepsister abducts her Prince and tries to kill her.  Luckily, Danielle teams up with two other former Princesses, creating a trio of heroines who are determined to rescue her Prince if they have to fight, flirt, bespell and bluff their way through all of Fairytown to do it. This book was tons of fun! This is the best pure fantasy adventure I've read in a long time. It's also fairly unabashed girl power. I really enjoyed it. In this world, fairy tales are true, more or less. Danielle de Glas did sneak off to the ball dressed in glass slippers she received from the tree over her mother's grave. She did not arrive there in a transformed pumpkin. Her comrades in arms are Ermillina “Call me Snow” Curtana, and Talia “ask about the fairies again and I'll kill you” Malak-el-Dahshat. One of the more interesting parts of the ...

With Tangled opening, I thought it would be a good time to touch on fairy tales again, this time to talk about interpretations thereof. One of the complaints I've always heard about Disney flicks is that they 'tone down' or 'sanitize' the old stories. While I understand where the idea is coming from, sometimes I want to ask, tone down compared to what? Fairy tales and folk tales have been altered, changed, made more or less sexual, more or less violent, etc. throughout time. The people who finally collected and wrote down the stories had their own agendas and made their own changes.  Tales change from region to region. There is no true “original” version, just the oldest we have extant. I'm not saying I always approve of Disney's editorial decisions, just that you can't fully justify the argument that the writers are being “untrue” to the “original” story. Well, not when the story is a fairy tale.  When it's a history, okay.  Then I comple...

Mirror Kingdoms: The Best of Peter S. Beagle Peter S. Beagle, 2010 Premise: Collection of short fantasy works by Peter S. Beagle. Mirror Kingdoms is a collection of short works, but not quite a book of short stories. Many are a little long for that term, and I find that I am not properly appreciative if I think of them as short stories. Most are more like modern fairy tales than anything else. The writing style is loose and dreamy in some, tight and present in others. I must admit, I didn't feel in the mood to read a whole book of them this week, though that's a fault in me, not in the writing. I'm glad I stuck with it, though, as the stories saved for late in the book are phenomenal. Let's get the main thing out of the way first: what did I think of "Two Hearts", the "coda" to The Last Unicorn ? Mixed, honestly. The tone is fine, the voice is great, but I'm just not sure of the point, either of the story itself or the reason fo...

Andersen's Fairy Tales Hans Christian Andersen, originally written in 1830's-40's translation date unknown One last free Fairy Tale collection and then I'm on to something else. I had more Kindle version formatting issues this week, I'm afraid.  There are a few points at which there should be poetry or quotations (italicized, indented text) but they are missing.  Not a huge problem, but this means a long poem is missing from “The Shoes of Fortune” and the punch line of “The Old House” is lacking. Aside from that, I found this collection uneven, and remembered why as I child I largely preferred Grimm's Tales. There are a few real winners.  I forgot how much I like “The Snow Queen”.  It's a long meandering tale with plenty of intriguing minor characters and the edges of lots of other stories surrounding the core.  The scene in which Gerda hears the story that each flower knows was beautiful and very surreal.  I adore the side plot about the vici...

  Grimm's Fairy Stories Unknown date, unknown translation As you know if you've been reading here recently, I downloaded a bunch of free fairy tale collections to my Kindle.  If you are considering doing the same, do not bother with this one. Almost all the stories worth reading are also in The Blue Fairy Book . Note the title.  This is a slim selection of fairy tales, in fairly poor translation, not the full Grimm's Fairy Tales collection.  There are places where the stories seem to drop off or change direction suddenly mid-stream.  "The Little Brother and Little Sister", for example, is missing a paragraph found in other versions, which is needed to follow the plot. A few stories seem to have no point or plot, or extraneous boring digressions, although "Catherine and Frederick" is only a little worse here than in other versions I have found.  Only notable bits: "Bearskin" is one that isn't in every collection of Grimm...

The Blue Fairy Book Edited by Andrew Lang, 1886 Another free Fairy Tale collection this week.  The Blue Fairy Book is one of the earliest collections of fairy tales in English.  Andrew Lang and his staff collected, translated, and edited fairy tales into twelve collections, but the Blue Fairy is first.  He had good taste. The stories in this collection have an amazing range, and Lang is good enough to cite his source for almost all of his tales. There are 37 stories total, including six selections from Grimm, five from Perrault, a couple Scots tales (in dialect, sort of), a few British traditionals, three from the Arabian Nights, the part of Gulliver's Travels about Lilliput, and a full retelling of the Perseus myth with different names.  It's almost overwhelming. A few of them are really unique ones. “The History of Whittington” is a British rags-to-riches folk tale based vaguely on an actual historical figure. It's interesting to me because of its ...

American Fairy Tales L. Frank Baum, 1901 I have a Kindle!  I know, you're excited.  And you know what is FREE on the Kindle? Well, yes, lots of things are free on the Kindle, or on the internet and able to transfer to the Kindle, but that is not the point.  The point today is that lots of collections of Fairy Tales are FREE on the Kindle.  I've been busy, so short stories are just the ticket right now.  Today's selection is a rather unique series of tales by L Frank Baum. There is a fascinating harmony here between a practical "American" spirit and elements of traditional fairy tales.  For example, fairy spirits make trouble for fashion-conscious shopkeepers, an aspiring young cowboy lassoes Father Time, a boy king has trouble with spendthrift hangers-on, a "wise and ancient chemist" creates magical bon-bons, an immigrant (who happens to be an evil wizard) attempts to turn troublesome schoolboys into pigs. They are a bit unbalanced in ton...