The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Hounded (The Iron Druid Chronicles, Book 1 Kevin Hearne, 2011 Premise: A nigh-immortal druid gets into trouble with some gods and other supernaturals in modern-day Arizona. This was another one of the books that had lingered on my shelves for ages. I think we may have won this copy in a raffle or part of some online contest? Something like that. I honestly don't recall. So I finally read it, and it's (drumroll)... fine.  Good, even. Perfectly adequate and enjoyable urban fantasy. Smooth, readable writing, funny characters and scary villains, twisty plot with a strong ending. Very workmanlike and well-done. Had I read it when it came out in 2011, I might have read more in the series. And that's not a slight on the book, that's a look at how different my life is now, with a full-time job and a young child. If book one is enjoyable, but not outstanding, there had better be some compelling reason to pick up another. If I were particularly drawn to the protagonist, or the w...

A Local Habitation and An Artificial Night (October Daye, Books 2 and 3) Seanan McGuire, 2010 (both) Premise: Follows Rosemary and Rue . Toby handles a dangerous case involving diplomacy and technology, then a more dangerous situation dealing with a children's bogeyman who is all too real.  Being constantly home and also constantly busy is continuing to affect my reading habits. I want series content (repetitive characters, etc.) in a way I haven't in a long while, so I decided to finally dip back into this one. I really liked the first book, after all, but I just wasn't in the mood for more urban fantasy until recently. I liked these two books fine, but they didn't strike me as interesting or inventive as the first. For better or worse, there isn't much recap in terms of characters and relationships, so I struggled at first to remember how the vaguely feudal faerie world works and how it interacts with the mortal world. A Local Habitation is structured more like...

Last Dragon Standing (Heartstrikers, Book 5) Rachel Aaron, 2018 Premise: Sequel to  A Dragon of a Different Color . The endgame has begun. Bob, seer of the Heartstrikers, faces the culmination of his final plan. In order to save the world from a Nameless End, Julius Heartstriker and Marci Novalli must rally all the dragon clans and the forces of human magic, but that might not be enough. This final book brings the series to a fairly satisfying conclusion. It’s maybe a tad too happy of an ending to have much weight, but it is still a lot of fun. The characters are as charming as they have been all along. All the factions we’ve met (along with some random red herrings) are here for the big finale, and everyone has a part to play. The only other criticism I have is that giving all of these characters their respective emotional arcs takes a lot of pages. A pretty significant chunk of the book is tense conversation in which everyone hashes out their various issues, riva...

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...

Sunshine Robin McKinley, 2003 Premise: Rae is a baker with a career, a boyfriend, and a community. She knows not to go through the bad part of town alone. The lake near where her grandmother had lived should have been safe. There shouldn't have been vampires anywhere near there. This is one of the best damn vampire books I've ever read. It takes place in a fascinating world that is revealed only slowly and naturally. It's in first person, and there is almost zero info-dumping. Very little is revealed until it comes up directly, including important facts about the world and the characters' history. I loved the language in this book. Slang and conversation casually reflects the presence of everyday magic and myth. The world, as alluded to above, is a complex one. Vampires are the most dangerous paranormal critter, but not the only one. It's unclear how long they've been openly coexisting with humanity, only that there was a major conflict within livi...

A Dragon of a Different Color (Heartstrikers, Book 4) Rachel Aaron, 2017 Premise: Julius finally has some pull in his clan and an alliance with the Three Sisters. Of course, that was before his favorite brother killed his favorite sister, the girl he loved apparently died, and the entire clan of Chinese dragons set forth to conquer the American clan, ostensibly to protect them all from the rage of a powerful lake spirit. Follows No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished After I was somewhat disappointed with Book 3, I'm happy to report that I loved this installment. I think there's only one more book in the series, but this managed to raise the stakes in a way that felt organic, set up for a grand finale, and deal with all the fallout of the last book at a breakneck pace that kept me reading. In case it's at all possible that the premise above wasn't clear enough, this would not be a good jumping-on point. The networks of character relationships are key to this one. W...

Rosemary and Rue (October Daye, Book 1) Seanan McGuire, 2009 Premise: Half-faerie Toby Daye has been trapped by a spell for 14 years while the world went on without her. When an acquaintance calls her for help, her first response is “no,” but Countess Winterrose is not taking no for an answer, and Toby needs help whether she wants it or not. I have been interested in reading more by McGuire since I saw her speak at Emerald City Comic Con, so I’m diving into her urban fantasy series with the first book. This was a really solid read. I really liked the world a lot: the various courts and aspects of faerie society. There’s no info-dumping, you just glimpse the edges of much larger subjects as they arise. There is one scene that deals with a formal presentation to a ruler, and the writing for that is incredibly beautiful. I liked Toby (October); she isn’t unique among paranormal/urban fantasy heroines, but she’s snarky and tough and fun to follow around. My favorite aspect...

No Good Dragon Goes Unpunished (Heartstrikers, Book 3) Rachel Aaron, 2016 Premise: Julius is on top for the moment, but political turmoil in a dragon clan brings out a lot of opportunists. Sequel to Nice Dragons Finish Last and One Good Dragon Deserves Another . Oof. I was so looking forward to this book, that I think it really suffered from my heightened expectations. It’s not bad, per se, it’s just not what I wanted. It’s still well written, in an interesting world. I liked the new characters and the new things we learned about established characters. But I also got two things I wasn’t expecting from this author: realism over story and book six syndrome. In the first case, the book is bogged down by a lot of machinations and conversations and plot points that don’t really progress the bigger plot enough. I felt like a number of the twists and happenings weren’t essential, even though they were things that would have happened in ‘reality,’ given the set-up as it was. ...

Nice Dragons Finish Las t and One Good Dragon Deserves Another (Heartstrikers, Books One and Two) Rachel Aaron, 2014, 2015 Premise: Julius is the most insignificant dragon in the Heartstriker clan, and he’s spent his short life happily unnoticed by his more powerful kin, until now. This is a fast-paced, fun fantasy with just enough bite. (I think the only time I paused in reading through both books was at one point when I was convinced a scene was going to end in the death of one of two great characters.) It’s set in the near future on an Earth where magic has returned and influenced society. Rachel Aaron is also known as Rachel Bach, under which name she wrote the Paradox series (sci-fi fabulousness) that I devoured in 2014, so I had been meaning to try some of her fantasy for some time. The main characters are Julius and Marci, a young human mage. I like how her magic is completely different from dragon magic, and humans are still rebuilding their knowledge of magic a...

Greywalker Kay Richardson, 2006 Premise: Harper is a PI with a fairly average life, until a violent attack leaves her briefly, well, dead. Her experience leaves her with lingering symptoms: she sees and feels things that don't seem to be there. Oof. this is slightly awkward. Greywalker has been on my to-read list for a while now. The series was highly recommended by a friend, and the author is local to my new home. I picked up a cheap copy months ago, and it was the first one to hand when I decided I should actually start reading the books I bought over the last year. Unfortunately, it didn't really click for me. It wasn't one thing, just a series of little hiccups. It came out in 2006, and it feels modern except that characters keep talking about pagers. Pagers. All the time pagers, and going to the office to check messages. The word just dates it in a particularly awkward way. As a lifelong fantasy/SF fan, an author has to work much harder to get me to sympat...

London Falling Paul Cornell, 2013 (2012 in UK) New Release! I received an egalley of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Undercover cops Costain and Sefton, along with their Detective boss Quill, have been working this case for a long time. When the bust goes abruptly south, they, along with analyst Lisa Ross, delve deeper. But what they find turns reality on its head and they soon realize that this may involve going after a villain like no-one they’ve ever seen. Paul Cornell is mostly known for writing comics and well-loved episodes of Doctor Who. Here he proved he’s definitely got solid urban fantasy chops as well. I liked this book a lot, although it has a really slow burn. You meet the characters gradually, and it’s a solid police drama for at least the first five chapters or so before anything explicitly supernatural starts happening. Once it does, the pace picks up in a hurry. I eventually liked all the characters, although it took me awhi...

Kitty and The Midnight Hour (Kitty Norville, Book 1) Carrie Vaughn, 2005 Premise: Kitty Norville is a radio DJ by night, werewolf by, well, other nights. When she starts talking to her callers instead of just taking requests, she accidentally starts a call-in show for supernaturals, cranks, and the curious. Her sudden success should be great for her, except her pack and the local vampires are angry about the potential attention, and someone’s determined to take her off the air. Oh, now this was an urban fantasy/paranormal whatsit I could really enjoy. Kitty is sassy and snappish and she’s scared, but gaining nerve. I really liked that her goals revolved around staying alive, staying sane, and keeping her job. There’s a cute guy, but that is not the plot. The supporting characters were pretty interesting overall. I hope that there are some less antagonistic female characters in the later books; one flaw here is that, other than Kitty, this is a bit of a sausage fest. The ac...

Night Shift (Jill Kismet, Book 1) Lilith Saintcrow, 2008 Premise: Jill is a hunter, someone trained to battle the things from hell that sneak onto Earth to cause death and corruption. But she isn’t without weakness and darkness of her own, and with a force like she’s never seen causing havoc in her city, she isn’t sure whether she can still stand and fight. Hmmm. I read a historical romance by this same author and rather liked it most of the way through, hence picking this up off a dollar-book rack. Sorta wish I’d grabbed something else now. It wasn’t out-and-out terrible, I was curious about the setting and the plot, the hell creatures were interesting, and the fact that there were plenty of kinds of were-creatures and the story doesn’t bother to break you in easily about it was fun. I feel sort of uneasy about my opinions here, too. Did I dislike this book because Jill is just too rough around the edges for me? Because she’s weak? Because the unpleasant parts were too u...

Moon Called (Mercy Thompson, Book 1) Patricia Briggs, 2006 Premise: When a runaway kid shows up at Mercy’s auto shop looking for a little under the table work, it doesn’t seem like much. But a hungry teenager who’s also a new rewolf is a recipe for trouble. Luckily Mercy knows enough about wolves to give the kid a hand, until it drags her into an interstate plot that could put all the local paranormals in danger. The “our world except some paranormal folks are out in the open” setting is pretty familiar at this point to anyone who reads urban fantasy or PNR. The twist on this one is that of all things, minor fae were the first to go public, and it looks like other folks will eventually follow suit. So part of the background of the plot is a conversation internal to the werewolf community about being public or not, and that’s pretty interesting. It’s not really explored the way it could be, but it’s a neat aspect to consider. Mercy is fun, she’s not a were, but sort of simil...

Maggie For Hire Kate Danley, 2011 Copy received from BookRooster for review. Premise: Maggie is a tracker, but now someone’s tracking her. Her life of tracking undead and other nonhuman bail jumpers is upset when she’s caught between a group of strangely powerful vampires, an elf who wants her services on behalf of the elven queen, and a mysterious figure who wants Maggie’s power to walk between worlds. This was a fun read that started really strong, but there’s not much supporting the fun. The style of the writing is the most striking thing about this novel. Maggie’s voice is conversational and funny, with a decent turn on humorous phrases. The supporting cast is interesting and sometimes silly. The plot is pretty thin, though. It doesn’t end up amounting to much, and while the climax works, it wasn’t as strong as it could have been. The friendship between Maggie and Killian works right up until it feels forced, and while the style starts adorable, it eventually got a sm...

Hit List Laurell K. Hamilton, 2011 Note: this is the 20th paranormal thriller-romance featuring Anita Blake. Some unavoidable spoilers follow.   Premise: Anita's out of town for a change, wearing her federal marshal hat. She, Edward and a bunch of endangered newbies are hunting a serial killer targeting weretigers. But is it all a plot by the Harlequin to expose Anita to The Mother of all Darkness? Of course it is. Because at this point it would be silly to have a book in this series that was just a mystery, that wasn't linked to the nonsensical overarching plot. (/sarcasm) That gripe stated, the plot of this one wasn't so bad, except that it was enough plot for a novella, or a long short story, not a novel. The rest was padded out with poor description and restating the same points over and over. Seriously, does anyone read these books before sending them to print? Anyone? On the upside, there was only one sex scene! I'm shocked at the restraint! If...

Fireborn: Embers of Atlantis Tracy Hickman, 2011 Recent Release! Copy for review provided by Netgalley. Premise: Based on the Fireborn role-playing game. Ethan Gallows, ace cameraman, liked his life and his job, until his footage of unbelievable events was 'proved false' and no one believed the truth. He's been making the best of it in a world gone mad until his dreams start leaking into his waking life. Plus people start telling him not only is he a reincarnated dragon, but he has to rescue his brother, who is trying to kill them all. This is a decent book, fun and fairly interesting, with well drawn characters and a very intriguing world. It just doesn't completely pay off by the end. The best part is probably the setting. It is set in a modern world with magic, but not the kind where magic has secretly always existed, or where a select few know about the magic world. When it starts to flirt with those tropes, the tone becomes dull and lifeless. Rather...

Trio of Sorcery Mercedes Lackey, 2010 This post is part of a week-long series of reviews of Mercedes Lackey novels. See  intro post  for more information. Premise: Three urban fantasy novellas about magically talented women solving mysteries. Arcanum 101 is a Diana Tregarde prequel, featuring the witch and Guardian trying to find the connection between a fake psychic and a kidnapped girl, while simultaneously starting college. Drums is a sequel to the novel Sacred Ground , in which medicine woman Jennie Talldeer needs to stop an angry ghost from killing a young dancer. Finally, Ghost in the Machine follows techno-shaman Ellen McBride, who is called in to consult with a MMO corporation who find that their perfectly programmed monster may be more powerful than they planned. This was a fun read. I especially liked that the stories worked well together, despite not having much overt in common. The first is set in the early 70's, and the protagonist is a college...

The Neon Court Kate Griffin, 2011 New Release! Book provided by the publisher for review via NetGalley NB: Kate Griffin is the adult fiction pen name of Catherine Webb  Okay, first I have to come clean. I didn't request this book for review because I liked the sound of it. I did like the sound of it, it sounded fun and scrappy and not romantic, but I requested it because I found out Ms. Griffin, besides being an author, is a lighting tech. I, when the economy is feeling up to it, am a stage manager, so I feel a certain kinship. Literary Theater Techs Unite! Happily, I quite liked the book, so no harm came of my impulse. Premise: Matthew Swift, Midnight Mayor of London (that's a sort of magical enforcer/leader/diplomat) has just a couple of problems. First, two of the larger magical factions, the Neon Court and the Tribe, are on the brink of war over a murder. Second, an sometime friend of his seems to have a nasty case of should-be-dead-but-somehow-isn'...