The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

The Element of Fire Martha Wells, 1993, gently revised 2006 Premise: Set in the same world as The Wizard Hunters   and its sequels, but takes place centuries prior. In the kingdom of Ile-Rien, the Captain of the Queen’s Guard goes to rescue an academic sorcerer from a dangerous foreign wizard. It seems simple enough, but with power-hungry sycophants circling the young king, who himself seems disinclined to care about the kingdom, everything is part of someone’s plot and everyone will be drawn into the battle for the future of the country. I really enjoyed this book. Wells seems to have a knack for characters who I find likable because of their abrasive ways. In this book, it’s Kade Carrion, half-fay bastard sister to the king. She’s all sorts of awesome. She could be powerful, but chooses to mostly skate by on her luck and trickery. She’s snarky and sad and simply delightful. The Dowager Queen Ravenna is pretty spectacular as well. Just because her weak-willed son has re...

The Gods of Mars (Barsoom, Book 2) Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1918 Warlord of Mars (Barsoom, Book 3) Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1919 Premise: Sequels to A Princess of Mars . John Carter has at last returned to Mars, only to find he is still far from regaining his place and his love. He arrives in the Holy Valley of Dor, where the people of Barsoom take their final pilgrimage in the hopes of reaching Heaven. What he finds there is anything but peace and happiness, though. He'll be lucky to live through the day, and if he manages to fight through the ranks of the therns (the white Martians who inhabit the Valley) and reach the outer world again, his own people may condemn him to death for returning from the sacred lands! If you like action and good comradeship and exotic locales, if you like evil monsters and valiant warriors and beautiful women, if you get shivers when the narrator says “Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”then I think you owe it to yourself to check ...

The Last Ringbearer Kirill Eskov, 1999, English Translation by Yisroel Markov, 2010 This review will have to be a bit different, since this isn't technically a book. Well, it's a book in Russia, but it can't be legally published here. The Last Ringbearer is an elaborate fan work based on Lord of the Rings . You might have heard about this last winter, it was in the news for a while. For example, here's Laura Miller's article on Salon . The premise is actually pretty brilliant. First, it takes LOTR as a historical narrative, but not necessarily true. Second, considering how history on Earth is written by the victors, what might the actual events have looked like which inspired the story. To sum up: there was a war, and like most wars, it was mostly about resources and power, while superficially being about ideology. There are some flaws in either the writing or the translation. These include some awkward early expository infodumps, some poorly executed...

This post is part of a week-long series of reviews of Mercedes Lackey novels. See intro post for more information. The Lark and the Wren (Bardic Voices, Book One) Mercedes Lackey, 1992 I'd been considering re-reading a few books I hadn't looked at in years, and then I saw that I could read this one for free. Premise: More than anything, Rune wants to make music. But for a girl born a bastard, with no money and no connections, with nothing but talent, the path is bound to be long and hard. I remember enjoying this whole series when I was in high school, and on re-reading I'd say it's fluffy and light, with some major bright spots and some major flaws. One of the flaws is that the plot reads like a series of short stories all jammed together, not like a novel. The first half of the book or so is comprised of two major stories, which work well together. The first part tells how Rune is dissatisfied with her life, and how she ends u...

Fire in the Mist Holly Lisle, 1992 Note: this book is FREE for download. See below... Premise: Faia's mother tells her she should learn to use her gift, that she needs to decide what she will do with her life. Faia just wants to continue to be a shepherd. But when tragedy strikes, Faia's gift for magic will manifest in a new way, and she'll be thrust into the power struggles of a city not her home. This was a great book. Stuffed with great characters, an interesting world with a tangled history, interesting magic and cultures. It had such a great tone, too. A predominance of complex, fabulous women live at the mage-school Faia comes to. The conflicts between the female and male mages bewilder Faia, and she tries to think well of others, all while defending herself from their assumptions about an untrained hill-girl. She's a wonderful character, just flawed enough, just well-meaning enough, just vulnerable enough. I also really enjoyed her city-fied r...

Storm Over Warlock Andre Norton, 1960 At some point I realized that a handful of Andre Norton's books had somehow fallen out of copyright in the US.  Don't bother with the crummy formatting done by the people selling them on the Kindle Store, just check manybooks.net for free copies. Premise: Although he had been the lowliest member of the expedition to the planet Warlock, Shann Lantree is the only survivor of the attack. After humanity's rivals, the insectoid Throgs, take over the survey camp, Shann has to decide if he can strike back, and how. Of course, the situation is complicated when it turns out that Warlock isn't an uninhabited planet after all. This was a fun, fast-paced read, and I really enjoyed it. The bits of Shann's backstory are all we really need; no time is wasted on early exposition. His perspective is not always noble, his plans are not always clear even to himself. Also, he's accompanied  by two trained wolverines. I found Shan...

For anyone who missed our holiday experiment: Mainlining Christmas For your consideration: I present this FREE ebook, containing a series of cynical seasonal shorts. Download at Smashwords , or from Erin's website . Contains five short Christmas-themed stories Of course by Christmas-themed, I mean horror, suspense, tragedy and dark magic. Cover, editing and formatting by yours truly.  Enjoy!

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...