Gena and Finn would have never met but for their mutual love for the popular show Up Below. Regardless of their differences—Gena is a recent high school graduate whose social life largely takes place online, while Finn is in her early twenties, job hunting and contemplating marriage with her longtime boyfriend—the two girls realize that the bond between them transcends fanfiction. When disaster strikes and Gena's world turns upside down, only Finn can save her, and that, too, comes with a price. Told through emails, text messages, journal entries, and blog posts, Gena/Finn is a story of friendship and love in the digital age.

If this keeps up, I'm going to have to stop saying I don't like books about fairies. A History of Glitter and Blood is ambitious, warm, funny, and a great read. 

The central concept for the format is that a fairy is writing a history, which fairies never do. This leads to a somewhat experimental format that some negative reviews indicate some readers did not grasp. 

Thematically, this is taking on race and class intersectionality and knocking it the fuck out of the park. In particular, this explores what types of violence are acceptable against what types of people.

And I don't think it's unfair to interpret the unreliable narrator's depictions of women as a nuanced response to Rothfuss' blog post about The Hobbit.

So, basically, this is doing a billion different things and succeeding at all of them. Basically, the only thing that didn't work for me were the illustrations of written ephemera, but that's an issue with the size of my e-reader, not the illustrations themselves. 

I look forward to trying more by this author.

In the aftermath of a war between the tightropers and the fairies, ostensibly on behalf of the gnomes who life under the city, the only fairies left in Ferrum are Beckan and her friends. They do what they have to to survive. This one is memorable for a couple of reasons: it doesn’t shy away from what happens in wars, even fictional ones, and how that has forced Beckan and her friends to grow up very quickly. At the same time, there are things that they don’t understand, or don’t fully understand at first.

It also has a marvelously inventive & original world and society that still somehow has bits of fairy tale echoes. I found the details of the different places, as well as the interaction between fairies, gnomes, and tightropers, to be both original and convincing. Finally, the voice here is fantastic–I don’t want to give too much away, but this is a time that unreliable narration really worked for me. And there’s a sense of hard won hope that I really bought and appreciated. I’m still thinking about this book, weeks later.

Thank you Netgalley and Chronicle Books for this ARC copy of AHOGAB.

Did-Not-Finish at 33%

I absolutely love fairies and all fairy-related stories out there. If a book’s summary includes “fairy” in the description, I’m probably going to pick it up. Thus, I read an excessive amount of fairy books. A History of Glitter and Blood exists in a darker world than most other fairy novels I have read.

“Missing body parts were nothing to cry about and nothing to take too seriously.”

The city of Ferrum thrives on a very careful balance between the many species that live within the walls. The fairies dominate the world, except every now and again a neighbor loses an appendage to the gnomes. These instances are looked at as the price to pay for a stable city. After all, it’s said that fairies never die. Who needs an arm and a leg when you have the rest of forever to look forward to? But when all that is left is glitter and crumbs, is anyone really alive? Their society has dissolved into nothingness as the war between gnomes and tightropers wage on with the fairies caught in between.

There are various mythological creatures included in AHOGAB. Namely, the fairies, gnomes, and tightropers, but there is mention of other beings living in the city from time to time…at least until the gnomes get to them. The main characters include Beckan, Scrap, Josha, and Cricket - the remaining four fairies in Ferrum. Essentially, they’re a basket case of personal issues, drama, and secrets.

AHOGAB starts out with a lot of potential and many more ideas, but it fails to deliver. The novel is ideally written as a dairy or as someone’s first telling of the history of their species, hence the title. Unfortunately, the writing style is distracting and excessively messy. The overall plot feels weird and absentminded as the story jumps between past and present with little notification. It doesn’t even read as someone telling a story until the narrator breaks the fourth wall saying to disregard what has previously been written and more in later chapters. These instances are completely out of place, pointless, and honestly, weird for this novel. Even taking in account for the narrator’s style, the novel needs more editing to simply make the story flow better.

The book is described as a lyrical fantasy, but I can’t see how that term applies in this case. There are multiple drawings in addition to the story itself. I also couldn’t figure out the meaning of the majority of the pictures and how they related to that part of the plot. Where does the conflict or plot even begin? It’s a boring account about the characters running from place to place, doing unimportant things. Very “tell, don’t show” - the exact opposite of what you want in a book.

Overall, I would not recommend this novel. It’s not for everyone. Honestly, it’s “for” very few people. There are a lot of Did-Not-Finish reviews for this book, which I did not expect beforehand. Upon reading, though, I completely understand why it’s so hard to get through this book. I will add, though, that the author commented saying the e-ARC edition does have formatting issues (” missing some scene breaks, pictures not showing up right, etc”) that interferes with the novel. Hopefully these issues are the main source of my problem with the novel and all are solved upon the release date, August 4th, 2015.

Plot: 1/5
Characters: 2/5
Writing style: 1/5
All around idea: 2/5
Final Score: 1/5

When the tightropers came and declared war on the gnomes, almost all of the fairies left the city of Ferrum. The only ones to stay were Beckan and her three friends. A ceasefire is eventually called, but the danger remains as Beckan and her friends try to find a way to survive.

This book is weird. Very weird. I think a lot of people will be put off by the style. The story is written by one of the characters of the book as the events are occurring. As he writes, he jumps back and forth from past to present as he thinks of things. He'll interject his own commentary and berate himself in the middle of his writing. He repeatedly will add notes to remove parts that he's written or to add things in spots. And he lies and embellishes to make the story more interesting, which he admits. This includes creating a romance between two of the characters that never actually happened. It gets confusing at times trying to sort out what's going on and figuring out what the world is like. I never really got a clear idea of their world.

And it's not just the style that's weird. Fairies in this world are immortal beings covered in glitter that's constantly falling off. The thing is, all that glitter is still connected to them. They can always feel it being stepped on, brushed off, etc. Fairies have to learn at a young age to not cry from the pain of constantly being stepped on. Now add in the fact that gnomes like to eat fairies. Almost every fairy is missing at least part of their body, and they can still feel it after it's been separated from them. Some of the characters have parts of their body eaten in the book, and they can feel themselves being eaten even after they've left. Beckan carries the remains of her father in a jar (including an eye) so that he can still be around and watch her. And that's not a metaphor. He is still alive and literally can still watch her.

A good chunk of the book takes place after the war and is about the characters trying to recover from what they went through. That was my favorite part. Beckan and her friends are all pretty messed up from the war and the things they had to do to survive. They're each trying to get past it in their own way and cope, but they're all struggling and need each other. The bonds that are formed between the group of three fairies, two gnomes, and one tightroper hoping for peace were really sweet, even if things got a bit strained at times. The book took another strange turn at the end, but the friendship between the group was still there for me to enjoy.

Overall, it's a very strange book that will put a lot of people off with its weirdness, but I enjoyed it thanks to the strong relationships between the main characters as they dealt with the aftereffects of a war.