The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

Parable of the Sower Octavia Butler, 1993 Premise: The world outside is getting worse. Their neighborhood is safe for now, but it won't be forever. But who will listen to a young girl with a diary and some profound ideas? Wow. Now I completely understand why I've seen people referencing this book recently. The society in the novel isn't the society we have now, but it's a very plausible future on the way to a total breakdown. Corporate profit above all else, vast poverty, violence, and dangerous drug abuse, no infrastructure that individuals don't pay for, no social safety net for anyone but the wealthy. The main character lives in a walled neighborhood and records her thoughts in a diary. She is a teenager, but she recognizes that the world is not "going back to the way it was," the way the adults in her life hope. They have to figure out how to live in the world that will come. Part of her insight is practical, and part is religious. Th...

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...

Blueprint for Revolution: How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Non-Violent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World Srdja Popovic, Matthew Miller, 2015 Premise: The principles of nonviolent resistance, illustrated by practical examples of every scale from all over the world. I have been frustrated trying to read books about the current moment in politics. Popular politicians' hottest takes on how we should react to the darkening timeline we seem to find ourselves in leave me cold. But this. This is the book I needed. Maybe it is the book you need as well? It's not about dealing with today specifically. It's about changing the world. It's about overthrowing dictators, resisting oppression, fighting corporate policies, improving societies, and building social movements. It's also incredibly friendly and readable and has Tolkien references. The book lays out the principles that the people from the ...

The Girl with All the Gifts M. R. Carey, 2014 Premise: Melanie goes to class with a group of other kids. She likes their teachers, one in particular. She learns a lot in class, but she doesn't learn why she and her classmates live in cells on the base, or why no one is allowed to touch them, or why they only eat once a week... This book suffered a little for me from expectations that were one hundred percent not the book's fault. I had heard a lot of hype about this book, but on reflection, I only knew two things about it - it's about a little girl who is a zombie, but she doesn't know it, and it was really popular. I extrapolated from there that it would be a psychological book, full of unreliable narration, twists, and theories. I thought it would be entirely or mostly from her perspective, that the adults around the character might not know what was going on, that there would be a slow-burn reveal, and maybe she was the beginning of an outbreak. It...

Patsy Walker, A.K.A Hellcat: Vol. 1: Hooked On A Feline, Vol. 2: Don't Stop Me-ow, Vol 3: Careless Whisker(s) Kate Leth, Brittney Williams, 2016, 2017 Premise: Patsy has been through a lot. She's been an Avenger. She's been to Hell. Now she just wants to figure out how to make enough money for rent, and help other people out along the way. Collects Patsy Walker, A.K.A. Hellcat #1-17 (complete run). Aww. Shelve this book next to Squirrel Girl, they're both great examples of friendly comics with diverse casts of interesting characters that deal with emotion and action without losing a sense of hope and camaraderie. Patsy Walker is a really interesting character in a meta sense. She was created as a teen humor comic that turned to romance as the characters aged. (There were many of these comics in the 40s and 50s; the Archie comics are nearly the only surviving example of the type.) A cameo in an superhero title established that the characters might exist in the...

Final Girls Seanan McGuire, writing as Mira Grant, 2017 Premise: A new technology for completely immersive VR promises extremely effective therapy by causing the patient to feel as though they lived through a specific traumatic experience. A reporter is determined to determine whether it's a hoax. I've liked all of McGuire's novellas so far, and this didn't break the streak. It's interesting that this was released under her horror pen name; it does fit that paradigm. The world created by the VR technology is less intriguing than the magic and ghosts in Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day  and a lot less inventive than the world of Every Heart a Doorway  (which just won a Hugo!), but it's enjoyable nonetheless. This one is a tense, short thriller in which, after everything predictably goes wrong, the main characters are trapped in an unreal dream that is trying to really kill them. It's more compelling than most spins on this premise, partially because it ...

A Fire Upon the Deep Vernor Vinge, 1992 Hugo Winner - 1993 Premise: The galaxy is a big place, full of old civilizations, ancient powers, and ancient traps. What are the lives of two children and a librarian worth in all the universe? It took me a while to get through this book, and I'm not 100 percent sure what I think of it. I was thrown off at the start, as it takes a lot of pages to introduce all the characters, factions, and situations. I started expecting one kind of story and ended up in quite another. I think overall it's a good book, and an interesting one, but it's much more about world building than characters, so how much you enjoy that type of thing will probably dictate how much you enjoy this book. To be fair, the worldbuilding is really neat. It questions the breadth of consciousness that might be possible across a diverse and strange galaxy. The major alien races include one who is more or less a plant augmented by technology, and a race...