The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Under Heaven Guy Gavriel Kay, 2010 Premise: After the death of his father the great general, Shen Tai chooses to honor his father's life by spending his mourning years laying the dead to rest in a haunted battleground. For this deed he is granted respect and honor from his native land of Kitai, and two hundred and fifty priceless horses from the neighboring realm of Tagur. Now Tai must return to civilization and relearn how to survive the delicate and deadly dance of life at the court at Xinan. At least long enough to use his new wealth to secure his family and figure out who could be trying to kill him.  "You gave a man one of the Sardian horses to reward him greatly. You gave him four or five of those glories to exalt him above his fellows, propel him towards rank – and earn him the jealousy, possibly mortal, of those who rode the smaller ponies of the steppes. The Princess Cheng-Wan, a royal consort of Tagur now through twenty years of peace, had just bestowed ...

Okay, time for a quick plug. Facsimile, a sci-fi novel edited by me and written by my husband, is now available on Amazon.com. Paperback: $8.99   Kindle: $2.99 I may be a little biased here, but I honestly think it's quite good. Premise: Persephone lives in the near future, when most people use a profiling service for social networking. The company sells you a little camera that you wear constantly. Data that the camera picks up is used to create a highly realistic simulation of the user. Users can interact with their own profile to understand how they appear to the world (like seeing/hearing yourself on film, but interactive.) Some people use this to construct elaborate concepts of self-image or contemplate their identity. Most people interact with other people's profiles to decide if they would like to hire or date or befriend that person. Profiles cannot learn or change on their own, they can only respond to stimulus based on the way the subject has been recorde...

This is the Book Blogger Hop, a Blog Party and link list hosted by Crazy-for-Books.com Today's question is: "What are your feelings on losing followers? Have you ever stopped following a blog?"    I have so few regular readers that to worry about losing them seems counterproductive. I just write what I would enjoy reading, and readers will either enjoy that or they won't. A lot of people stop by this site to get information on a particular book, and aren't interested in following the blog.  That's fine too. I find the second part to be sort of a double-edged question. It implies the sort of Follow-for-Follow rule that I just can't do, partially because I don't use Google Friend Connect. If someone comes by and leaves a comment, I'll check out his or her blog, and will probably follow it for a while (via RSS). I read all my blogs and feeds via an RSS reader, and I freelance, such that when I'm working, I don't have time to do anyth...

No comic books came out this week that I am collecting.  I did look at the hard-cover Serenity: The Shepherd's Tale graphic novel.  Apparently it was planned to be released as a mini-series, and then after many delays they decided to put it out as a slim graphic novel instead. I skimmed it, and while it looks decent, it doesn't look much better than the other Serenity comics, which have all been just okay, in my opinion. And I'm not going to pay $14.99 for 50 pages of just okay. Ah well, next week there are 6 titles scheduled that I have some interest in...

Flirt (Anita Blake 18) Laurell K. Hamilton, 2010 Premise: Anita is actually at her day job, raising the dead, when she's interrupted by abduction and mercenaries threatening her loved ones. This is why super-heroes have secret identities. Wow.  Can I just say wow?  I admit that I am impressed. After having fallen so low, to be able to write up out of the hole, without actually ret-conning the mess out of existence. That takes some remarkable skill, or incredible luck. It was fun and exciting and dark in the right places. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, and that's the first one in this series I can say that about without reservation probably since book number 11 or 12. The quote on the cover is right. It is good to see Anita raising the dead. In some of the recent books a reader could easily be forgiven for thinking she didn't have a day job. Part of what's so good about this one is the simplicity. It's a short book in which Anita has to make the ha...

Skin Trade (Anita Blake 17) Laurell K. Hamilton, 2009 Just in time for Halloween, I'm catching up on my Anita Blake. Premise: Anita is called to Las Vegas to help hunt down a vampire serial killer. While there, she has to try not to have sex with were-tigers....This series is so surreal. This one was really not bad. I continue in my opinion (from book 16) that it does feel as if Hamilton is trying to write her way out of the hole she'd dug for the series. After books and books of angst and ridiculous new powers every time you turn around, this one had a sense that things were beginning to stabilize. I had quit after Harlequin (book 15), which I felt sunk to new depths of idiocy, and while I did break down and read Blood Noir (book 16) and felt that it was somewhat better, I didn't return to the series until recently. There is still a great deal of ridiculous repetitive business about beasts and sex and such that mostly gets in the way of the story here. ...

  The Book Blogger Hop is a blog party/link list hosted by Crazy-for-books.com.   Every week there is a question for the bloggers to consider. This week: "What is the one bookish thing you would love to have, no matter the cost?"   Hmmm... this is difficult, because I am fairly happy with my reading life. I have a severe lack of space for new books, but now I have a Kindle.  I was thinking: What would I love to have a really nice edition of?  But I have a good Collected Works of Shakespeare, and a Complete Holmes with original illustrations, all of the Vorkosigan novels in nice editions and a lovely hard cover LOTR...   So I'm going to say, if I won the lottery, I would like to have a bookstore.  (The lottery part means that I don't have to sell popular but boring books to stay in business.)  Where I could read and talk to people about books all the time, and encourage the sales of books that I love. Yeah, I think t...