The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Jem and the Holograms: Showtime (Volume 1) Kelly Thompson, Sophie Campbell, 2015 New Release! I received an electronic copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Jerrica Benton and her sisters dream of a music career. An online video contest seems like a great way to make a splash, but first Jerrica will need a way around her stage fright, and then they’ll meet the competition…Collects Jem and the Holograms Issues #1-6 Up front, I need to admit: I never watched Jem as a kid. I knew that there were dolls in shiny outfits, but it wasn’t a show I was ever into. Today, I think I’ve maybe seen at most one episode, watched on Youtube years back when I was curious. I was told the premise at some point. So unlike many people who are going to read this book, I don’t care about Jem the show. I love Jem the comic book. I love the bouncy, sprightly dialogue, the silly situations. I love the good-hearted characters and the fledgling romances. I love tha...

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 ...

Ready Player One Ernest Cline, 2011 New Release! Copy for review provided by Netgalley. Please Insert Coin to Begin. Premise: In the very near future, life is pretty bad. Most people spend their time (and their money) on the OASIS, an enormous virtual system that has replaced the internet, schools, many workplaces, and more. But the late creator of the OASIS left a secret, an easter egg, in the program somewhere. Whoever finds it is entitled to the late billionaire's entire fortune. There are corporations that spend all their time and energy in the search for the egg, but there are also lots of freelancers. Freelancers like Wade Watts, high school kid and gunter (egg-hunter). But no one has made progress on the riddle of the Egg in years, that is, until now... This is the most charmingly adorable dystopia I think I've ever read, and I mean all the words in that sentence. Halliday, the man behind the OASIS and the hunt for the Egg, was a child of the 80's, a...