The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Wintergirls Laurie Halse Anderson, 2008 Premise: Lia has a problem. She thinks it's that her father and mother hate each other or that her stepmother is always on her case. Or that her best friend is dead. The way Lia looks at food and sees numbers, the way she gets around adults plans for her, that makes her strong, right? This isn't the type of book I generally read. If you'd told me that I would be swept away utterly by a book which portrays the mental state of someone suffering from anorexia, I might not have believed you. But this book is amazing. The style is evocative and appropriately chilling. Lia is completely sympathetic and her feelings are comprehensible, even while the reader despairs of her decisions. She lives in a world more and more unconnected from reality. And then she starts to see things. Maybe. Maybe not. In Cassie's words: “You’re not dead, but you’re not alive, either. You’re a wintergirl…” Lia eventually has to decide whether ...

Orphans of Chaos John C. Wright, 2005 Premise: Amelia and her friends go to an unusual school. The hardly ever leave and it seem like they’ve been there an awfully long time. Will they ever discover what their true backgrounds are? Do I care? Warning up front: there will be spoilers of a sort for this book. I wish I'd known more going in, or known enough not to go in. Don’t read it. Just. Don’t. I came close to not even finishing this book. I just... it’s terrible. It’s boring and unpleasant and I hated it. But here, let me explain a couple of the specific subjects I took issue with. 1) Women. I believe and have experience that corroborates the fact that men can write perfectly believable and sympathetic female characters, but I did not find that to be the case here. The main character, Amelia, starts out as a fairly stereotypical tomboy. She has little use for the only other girl of her age, who is more stereotypically female (her name is even Vanity). She has a fe...

Fingersmith Sarah Waters, 2002 Premise: Susan Trinder was raised a thief, in a family of thieves. An older male friend convinces her to go in on a scheme to swindle a young gentlewoman out of her fortune, by posing as a maid. Think you know how this story goes? You’re wrong. “When I try now to sort out who knew what and who knew nothing, who knew everything and who was a fraud, I have to stop and give it up, it makes my head spin.” - Susan, page 117 Fingersmith is a maze of lies, tangled history, pornography, madhouses, jails, thieves, murderers, and passion. Susan tells her story in the first person, but doesn’t give away much of what’s to come, just enough to darken her story with a great deal of foreboding. It’s an uncomfortable story in many ways, full of unhappy people acting out their unhappiness in desperate acts and hurting everyone around them. It’s completely compelling from first to last, though. Sue and Maud (the aforementioned young lady) are the main characte...

Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang Kate Wilhelm, 1976 Hugo Winner - 1977 Premise: David’s family has lived in the valley for generations. Many members of the family go out, work in vastly different fields, but they remain connected to each other. When rumors begin of coming disaster, the valley becomes the last hope for them all. This is a unique story that also manages to capture a sense of the common bonds of humanity. It is split into three sections, with three different view-point characters, separated by generations. The writing is lovely; the characters are complicated and sympathetic. There were a couple of future-science things that made me think: “wait a minute, I don’t think that’s how that works”. Like the best books of its type, though, it’s the social and cultural ramifications of the developments that are interesting and important, not whether it’s scientifically plausible. This book is the story of the survival of the human species, and what physical survival...

The Fleet (Fleet, Book One) Edited by David Drake and Bill Fawcett, 1988 Premise: Anthology series in which authors (many well-known) write stories in a shared universe. The human-allied worlds are at war with the Khalia. We can’t understand each other, we don’t know for sure how it started, but The Fleet is the last line of defense against invasion and subjugation. Ever since I randomly read the second one in this series in 2007, I’ve kept an eye out for the rest of the series. They’re anthologies, the quality is mixed, but there’s enough little gems here to keep me checking the dollar rack. This first volume includes eleven stories very loosely strung together by a frame story about a news (propaganda) producer looking for a good story to boost morale. The stories range widely, including a semi-hypothetical account of how the war started, a comedic piece about a quartermaster put in charge of a third-tier base who has to figure out how to convince a newly encountered spec...

Bones of the Fair Andrea Höst, 2013 Premise: Sequel to Champion of the Rose , but you don't need to read that one first. Gentian has been 14 long years away from her home in Darest. She returns for an irresistible job and the possibility that the miraculous return of the ruling family will have repercussions for her particular problem. She will stay to investigate a mystery that impinges on the future of her home, and its complicated relationship with the ones who lived there before humans... Don't expect a direct continuation of the story of Champion of the Rose . While several characters are in both, and this is the continuation of the larger story, Soren - the heroine of CotR - only appears briefly. Instead, this is Gentian's story, and she is marvelous. Quiet and self-possessed, she is heir to a line of master mages but she specializes is the relatively unflashy business of garden design, informed by her sensitivity to places. Her opposite is the other viewpo...

Locke & Key Volume 6: Alpha & Omega Joe Hill, Gabriel Rodriguez, 2014 (issues originally 2013) New Release: I received a digital galley of this book from Netgalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Sequel to Clockworks . The final chapter. Everything is in place. The Omega Key has been found. Evil forces are on the move in Keyhouse, and Tyler and Kinsey Locke are going to have to be very careful and very lucky to live through the end of the school year… Ack. What is left to say about Locke & Key? I wasn’t sure about this series at first, but it really grew on me over time. The horror grows slowly and steadily, the characters and the backstory are built piece by piece. This volume opens with a fully natural-feeling recap, just so you know where everyone is, and then launches full-tilt into the climax. Everything that happens was set up. It all makes sense (for the most part anyway) with each character’s established motivations, but all the plot twists and tur...