The Blue Fairy's Bookshelf

All American Boys Brendan Kiely and Jason Reynolds, 2015 Premise: Rashad and Quinn live in the same town and go to the same school, but they don't know each other. Then one is beaten by a police officer and the other sees it happen. The moral of this book is on the nose, and it wears that fact openly. It's intended for a YA audience and comfortable with that. Happily, the style was strong enough to carry me through the first half, and the ending works very well. It's presented in alternating chapters between the two boys' perspectives. Both boys felt concrete and realistic to me in their various obsessions, casual macho posturing, impatience with parents, etc. Rashad is a good student who had never been in trouble, so it's easy for the reader to see that he's the victim of profiling. Quinn's place in the story is the white kid who learns racism is not only real, it's affecting his community. However, although some of the authors' early...

Torn Roweena Miller, 2018 New Release! I received a copy of this book from NetGalley for the purpose of review. Premise: Sophie has worked hard to carve out a life for herself. Combining her hereditary skill in casting good luck charms with long training in sewing has eventually led to a somewhat successful shop of her own. Just when it seems that her work will be noticed by a higher class of customer, a group pushing for governmental reforms risks starting a riot that could engulf the city, and her own brother is leading the way. None of the themes dealt with in this book were groundbreaking or unique, but I don't know that I've ever read a fantasy novel that addresses them directly, and I really appreciated that. I really enjoyed the nuance and tension in this book. Everyone is complicated. No one knows everything or understands everything. It features a populist uprising in which neither the royalty nor the commoners are fully in the right. Even though I wa...

Usagi Yojimbo: Book 1: The Ronin, Book 2: Samurai Stan Sakai, 1987, 1989 Read Harder Challenge - A comic written and illustrated by the same person I'm sure I first saw the samurai rabbit as an action figure that went with my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles back in the 80s. I knew it was a long-running series, I knew it was acclaimed, and heck, I bought these two books off a sale rack without hesitation, but somehow I never sat down to read any before. After I caught a handful of excerpts online, though, it drifted up to the top of the to-read list. First, the mixed. The first book is a collection of the character's earliest appearances, and it shows; the writing is a bit abrupt here and there. The art is great overall, but occasionally it seems caught between styles - the writing and events follow a more serious dramatic tone, while the expressions of minor (often dying) characters evoke a "funny animal comic" look. (This is separate from the minor sight gag...

Parable of the Talents Octavia Butler, 1998 Read Harder 2018 Challenge: A sci-fi novel with a female protagonist by a female author Premise: Sequel to Parable of the Sower . Lauren Olamina tries to protect her growing family, her community, and the movement she hopes to foster, but the rest of the world isn't ready to leave them in peace. Oof. This was a hard read. I had to take a break several times. All of the content warnings on this one: rape, murder, and torture, including violence targeting women, LGBTQ people, and racial and religious minorities. Government-sanctioned religious extremism. A politician rising to power on xenophobia, sexism, racism, and a false nostalgia for the past. If it had been written today, people would say the parody was too on-the-nose and over the top. However, what troubled me the most wasn't any of that. The text of the novel is mostly drawn from the main character's diaries, but there's a framing device where each chapte...

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...

The Three-Body Problem Cixin Liu, 2007, English translation Ken Liu, 2014 Hugo Winner - 2015 Read Harder Challenge - A book of genre fiction in translation Premise: Do you like trippy philosophy, complex morality, and lots of science in your sci-fi? Are you comfortable with that slight feeling of disconnection that can come with reading a translated work (even a really well-translated work)? Read it. I just found out that there's a lot given away in the standard descriptions of this book. I'm personally really glad that I knew nothing going in. That's not always my taste, often it's better for me to know roughly what to expect. (For example: if I'm in the mood for a light fantasy adventure, I'll be disappointed in a gritty medieval war story, but if I'm expecting a gritty medieval war story, I might be bored by a fairy tale retelling.) Sometimes a great author can get around your expectations, but I hardly ever have the patience for a book t...

All Systems Red (The Murderbot Diaries, Book 1) Martha Wells, 2017 Premise: All Murderbot wants is to be left alone to watch tv. Unfortunately, if it doesn't want its free will to be discovered, it still has a job to do, and someone's trying to kill the people it's supposed to protect. This was an absolute delight. Going in, I thought was that this was a novella from the point of view of a killbot. What I found was a snarky sci-fi adventure with a protagonist whose general misanthropy is not entirely genuine, but this never falters into pathos. The humans call it Security Unit, or SecUnit, but a murderbot is what it calls itself. The reason why is a mix of black humor and cynicism. Murderbot is not only hiding its sense of humor but also its free will from both the humans it's assigned to and the shadowy Company that owns it and financed the scientific mission they're on. A SecUnit has consciousness, but it isn't supposed to be able to choose for ...