The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Incandescent Emily Tesh, 2025 Premise: In an alternate present where some schools teach magic, Doctor Walden is teaching teenagers how not to get eaten by demons while dealing with constant bureaucracy and her own nonexistent love life.  I really, really liked this book. I'm not sure I loved it as much as the author's first novel , but that one was a truly unique experience. The two stories are different beasts, although there are commonalities, like occasionally unreliable narration and sapphic relationships. I liked the characters a lot, and I enjoyed the juxtaposition of the kind of nonsense that any elite school deals with - teenage drama spilling into the classroom, teacher infighting, the tension between kids from rich families and the handful of kids on scholarships, etc. - and potentially life-and-death magical incursions by extradimensional forces. As a stupid American, I did sometimes have trouble following the British school terminology (how old is a what number...

All the Murmuring Bones A.G. Slatter, 2021 Premise: Miren O'Malley (last true daughter of those O'Malleys, the ones who fortune used to favor) has always lived in the big house by the cliffs by the sea. That's where her grandparents raised her and where she expected to live out her days. But when her grandfather dies and her grandmother tries to arrange her marriage to restore their family fortunes, everything changes overnight.   This was a very cool book. I've seen Irish/Celtic elements in many fantasy novels, but this world was completely steeped in them. It was extensive to the point that early on I wasn't sure whether it was set in an alternate world or just Ireland with real magic. And just the feel of it - combining a generations-long story of family secrets with supernatural and dark fairy tale elements (and in-world fairy tales as well). Very cool. Much like some of the oldest tales and myths, the story does meander a bit, and ends up as a journey containin...

Assassin's Apprentice Robin Hobb, 1995 Premise: The life of a royal bastard is always complicated, but it's even more so when certain powers might run in your bloodline.  I tried a different book by this author many, many moons ago and was put off by it enough not to try another. But this one was chosen for a book club, so I decided it was time to give her another try.  Verdict? It's fine.  The characters are fine - nothing too exceptional, nothing badly done about them, except maybe that most are a bit obvious from their first appearances. There's a bit of a Shakespearean feeling to them which is enjoyable, but (again) makes them a bit dramatically predictable.  The plot has moments of real cleverness and tension alongside stretches where I had trouble convincing myself to pick the book back up, which averages out to... fine. I did really like the way the book handled what is effectively a confusion spell being cast on the viewpoint character - that's a fine line ...

Babel, or the Necessity of Violence: An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution R. F. Kuang, 2002 Premise: Robin was rescued from death in China as a boy, and he loves so much about his new life in England, especially the chance to study, to perform the translation that underpins the magic that runs the world. But what is the cost of the system? What if Robin isn't willing to pay it anymore? I'll admit that this book first got on my radar as "the book that should have won the Hugo for Best Novel" if not for bad behavior on several fronts. [ https://www.npr.org/2024/02/23/1233355111/the-hugo-awards-scandal-has-shaken-the-sci-fi-community] And it would have been a worthy winner. A tour de force combining fantasy and history to focus an intentionally painful spotlight on the global and personal impacts of colonialism and privilege, it was both compelling and horrifying. In the character of Robin, the tension and inner moral struggle between accepting som...

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi Shannon Chakraborty, 2023 Premise: Many have heard of the exploits of the pirate Amina Al-Sirafi. Few know that she retired years ago to raise her daughter, and fewer know that she still misses the sea, as she barely admits it to herself. When a former shipmate's family asks for help (then uses bribes and threats to compel her), she'll have no choice but to regain her ship and her crew, but they've never faced anything like this before.  Middle-aged mom goes on an adventure? Sign me up for this book.  More seriously, I was very quickly drawn into the world and the characters. Medieval-era Muslim seafarers in the Indian Ocean already makes for a colorful and intriguing setting, and as each character was introduced, their backstories added more dimensions and nuances. The blending of different mythologies and religions was especially fun. Amina knows the rules about some kinds of supernatural things, but her Islamic background doesn't hel...

I'm paring down my physical bookshelves again (making room for some new stuff). Last year (or the year before?) I read many of the books that I had bought but never read. Now I'm working my way through some that I read many years ago to see if I still like them. I don't have enough to say for full reviews, but I want to record my reactions.  Lythande and The Gratitude of Kings Marion Zimmer Bradley, 1986, 1997 Oof. Talk about problematic authors. I always wanted to like MZB's stuff more than I actually liked her work, even before I found out about her being probably a terrible awful person . (I have a strong memory of throwing Mists of Avalon across the room in fury as a teenager, although I still overall enjoyed it at the time.) Lythande is a book of short stories about the wizard Lythande, whose power depends on keeping the fact that she's a woman a secret. ( The Gratitude of Kings is another story about the character written a decade later.) I liked these storie...

The City in Glass Nghi Vo, 2024 Premise: A love story about a city. And a demon. Destruction, history, and rebirth. This novella was fascinating, weird, heartbreaking, and beautiful. I'm not sure what else to say.  Vitrine is a demon and the patron of a thriving port city. She loves the city and the people, but at the beginning of the story, the city is destroyed by angels, all its people murdered. She spends decades recoving from this blow, remembering what was, and slowly seeing what might come next.  That's it. That's the story. During this emotional journey, she is also troubled by one of the angels, who falls in love with her. But love between these beings isn't like mortal love. She has cursed him, and he suffers. They fight and work together and fight again, helping the new city to grow on the ashes of the old in their own ways. And the ending is delightfully weird. They do not "get together" in any human sense, but... how can I say this without complet...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Book Review: The Merriest Misters Timothy Janovsky, 2024 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics. This romantic spin on The Santa Clause makes for some real holiday magic. Premise: Patrick and Quinn met, fell in love, got married, moved into their own house. Everything you're "supposed" to do. But their marriage is cracking under the pressure of family expectations, unspoken resentments, and unfulfilling careers. That's when Patrick unexpectedly gets a most unusual opportunity, and Quinn's along for a wild ride all the way to the North Pole.  Well, the library gods were kind to me and provided this last-minute holiday gift! This might be my favorite Christmas read of the season.  Think The Santa Clause, except instead of a guy killing Santa, becoming Santa, and fixing his relationship with his son, Patrick injures Santa (who unexpectedly quits), becomes Santa, and fixes his relati...

Crossposted from Mainlining Christmas Book Review: It's a Fabulous Life Kelly Farmer, 2023 This year, I'm looking at a handful of interesting retellings of holiday classics. Here's an obvious one.  Premise: It's a Wonderful Life, but cheap-Netflix-remake ready.  I've often been a bit of a cynic when it comes to It's a Wonderful Life, and this book didn't cure me of that.  To me it reads like a romance novel full of very standard modern-romance-movie tropes - Girl lives in small town, but wants to move to the city. Girl's high school crush moves back to town and they reconnect. Both get roped into helping with a town holiday festival. Minor drama as girl can't decide whether to stay in town with first love or strike out for dream life in city. Magic of Christmas makes girl appreciate her life in town and decide to stay with first love. The fact that both girl and first love are female just makes it a modern romance, not an untraditional one.  And act...

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 ...

He Who Drowned the World Shelley Parker-Chan, 2023 Premise: Sequel to She Who Became the Sun . Zhu continues her fervent quest to become emperor of all China (while hiding her original gender). The Mongol general Ouyang still burns with his desire to take revenge for the murder of his family. Many other characters are waiting in the wings to interfere. This was an incredibly satisfying and fitting sequel. The most interesting thing, I thought, was that the first book was about gender and identity, contrasting Zhu's ambiguity with Ma's femininity and Ouyang's obsession with not being "really" male. This book is about bodies and identity. The relationship between a person and their body. That can include their gender, but there's more to it. Zhu learns to manage a new physical disability and struggles to maintain her troops' confidence in her, as many people see a physical lack as evidence of some deeper problem. She and Ouyang continue their strained, pain...

Fourth Wing Rebecca Yarros, 2023 Premise: Violet's mom is making her go to dragon rider school even though she doesn't want to and it's dangerous. But her sworn enemy is hot. Somehow these characters are not teenagers.  I tried, y'all. I tried to go in with an open mind. The writing isn't terrible, in that the pacing mostly trips along briskly, some of the description is fine, and the exciting bits are sometimes kind of exciting.  But MY GOD. The vapid characters, the complete lack of interesting or believable world-building, and the extremely predictable plot "twists" had me struggling to make it to the end.  You're telling me the hot rebel guy is actually nice, and also on the morally right side? I'm so shocked.  And then the narration awkwardly has to remind us that our heroine is 20, so we can stick in an explicit sex scene.  Y'all. I am not against sex scenes. And these were.... fine? Not terrible. But they didn't progress the plot or ...

Harrow the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, Book 2) Tamsyn Muir, 2020 Premise: Sequel to Gideon the Ninth . Harrow has survived the trials of Cannan House. Sort of. Now she must train to fight a monster that can kill the God-Emperor of the Nine Houses... unless nothing is as it seems. Man, this book is awesome, but it asks a lot of you.  The first time I read it, it was like a fantastic psychological horror movie. The book switches back and forth between the present-day Harrow and flashbacks. Only the flashbacks don't match what happened in the previous book. You, the reader, know that something is wrong. Something is askew. Is it in Harrow's mind? What does this mean? What actually happened then? What is happening now? The answers are wilder and weirder than I initially could have imagined. It's fantastic. The third time I read this book, it was as an audiobook, which made me slow down and really appreciate all the details and character beats. The emotional payoffs in this one are...

The Last Graduate and The Golden Enclaves (The Scholomance, Book 2 and 3) Naomi Novik, 2021, 2022 Premise: Sequels to A Deadly Education . El and her friends cook up an audacious scheme to get out of high school alive, only to discover that life outside the Scholomance is stalked by deadlier dangers.  (Thematic spoilers for this series below, but no explicit plot spoilers except for the one implied by the title of book two.) So I liked book one, right? And from the title of the second book, I was pretty sure our heroes were going to find a way around the whole "every group of kids has to run this deadly gauntlet to escape the high school" status quo.  And they did, and it was awesome. However, it was really in the third book where this series shifted gears and revealed its heart. It isn't just about characters growing up. It isn't just about kids with magic in a dangerous world. There's no big bad guy to fight, although there are dangerous power players.  It'...

Mammoths at the Gates (The Singing Hills Cycle, Book 4 Nghi Vo, 2023 Premise: Follows Into the Riverlands, although these books can mostly be read in any order. Cleric Chih is finally headed home after many adventures, only to run into trouble at the abbey's very doors. Like each of the preceding novellas, this is both an entertaining fantasy adventure and a beautiful meditation. In this case, the deeper meaning is focused on memory.  When Chih returns home to the Singing Hills Abbey, they discover that most of the other inhabitants are off on a special investigation and their beloved mentor has passed away. This would be stressful enough without the mentor's granddaughters, their soldiers, and their very large mammoths demanding the elder cleric's body, contrary to Abbey tradition.  That's the surface story. The real story is about remembering someone who is gone, and all the stories, contradictory and complex as they may be, that make up a life. It's also about ...

Gideon the Ninth (The Locked Tomb, Book 1) Tamsyn Muir, 2019 Read to the end...  Premise: Gideon has been trying to escape the Ninth House since she was a child. Now her only way out might be to accompany her nemesis Harrowhark in her quest to become one of the Emperor's chosen necromancers. But the trial to become a lyctor is far from safe for necromancers and their bodyguards. I know, I know, I'm late to the party here.  I can nitpick about some intentionally anachronistic word choices that were a smidge too tone-breaking for me. I could point out that at the end of the book I still understand almost nothing about the structure of this Empire, how big it is, what it means that the Emperor "resurrected" the Houses, how the Houses are even supposed to work.  But little of that matters.  Gideon's sarcastic, hilarious voice carries you through the beginning and the light exposition about the bonkers uber-goth-necromancers-somehow-built-a-society setting, and then t...

A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, Book 1) Naomi Novik, 2020 Premise : El attends a school for magic-users. Only the school is probably trying to kill them, and it'll take more than dedication to learning to survive. Despite having enjoyed many of Novik's other books, I avoided this one for a few years. Anything where the opening pitch is "school of sorcerers" is getting some serious side-eye from me, and I figured it was YA-ish, and I find YA tedious or disappointing 90% of the time.  In this case, I ran across some more info about the protagonist on Tumblr that piqued my interest. El's name is really Galadriel because her mom is a hippie witch. She has a talent for dark and deadly magic so strong that it basically amounts to a curse. (As in, it's very difficult for her to, say, cast a spell to help a flower grow, but she would find it incredibly easy to poison an entire countryside.) She's trying to keep both these facts (her mom and her power) from be...

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...

A Wizard of Earthsea, The Tombs of Atuan, The Farthest Shore Ursula K. LeGuin, 1968, 1971, 1972 Premise: The boy Ged becomes a wizard, becomes a man, then continues to shape the destiny of Earthsea.  I read A Wizard of Earthsea years and years ago but had no real memory of it. I picked up this trilogy cheap at some point, so this post is another in this year's "reading the unread books on the shelf" project.   I deeply respect LeGuin, and I knew these were beloved, but for some reason, I didn't expect the books to be awesome. But of course, they are.  From the start, this is a cool world. A complex area of islands and archipelagos bounded on all sides by the unknowable seas. Steeped in myth and mystery, but still grounded with the everyday details of farming, fishing, sailing.   All three books have cool stories. They are often marketed as YA; the first one in particular is accessible to young readers without pandering to them, and it's not limited to their...

The Dragon and the George Gordon R. Dickson, 1976 Premise: A man jumps mentally into a medieval fantasy world in search of his fiancee. I picked up a copy of this off a dollar rack ages ago because I knew it was the (partial) inspiration for the animated movie The Flight of Dragons, a staple of my childhood. This background knowledge meant that I finished the book despite an extremely lackluster opening section. The beginning reminded me, negatively, of Connie Willis' Oxford time travelers books, in that the characters are unlikeable, insufferable academics. Jim and his fiancee Angie are poor, depressed adjuncts scrabbling for enough work and money to buy a home. Jim feels quite hard done by, by his boss, his landlord, and the world in general. He idly wishes that he lived in a time when you could use physical force against those who wronged you, thinking this would somehow be simpler. As a historian, he should really know better. He also has a weird obsession with Angie's abi...