A History of Glitter and Blood

You've heard the saying "Beauty from Ashes"? Well, this book is more like "Beauty from Burning Flesh." No, there's no actual burning flesh (is there burning flesh?), but Ms. Moskowitz has an artful way of molding poetry and horror and desperation into something beautiful. I'm not at all trying to sound pompous, but rather express a deep truth about her writing: it's gritty and violent and bloody, but it makes my heart swell at weird moments and I can't look away.

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

This certainly isn't the fairy tale you're used to. A fairy is writing its own story for the first time, and this isn't whimsy. Instead, it's a precarious existence between the ruling class fairies and the working class gnomes who, you know, occasionally take a bite out of them. And those bites, or the glitter that sluffs off of them on a daily basis, continue to be sentient in the saddest and most gruesome truth of immortality.

But! This war story is also a love story. Beckan and Scrap and Josha and Cricket are a family, a pack, and later joined by some beautiful others. They play and trick and starve together, remaining in the war-torn Ferrum when no other fairies do. They quarrel with each other and with the gnomes, but they never stop loving and protecting one another. And it's lovely.

Five stars for an amazing cast of characters. While I loved tough-as-nails Beckan and tries-to-understand Scrap, my biggest surprise was loving Rig.

Rig, who came back broken, but not broken enough to fit in. Rig, who wanted to be the sort of girl who could be happy wanting exactly what everyone expected her to want. Rig, the sort of girl who could love and heal and laugh.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes their fairies with a bit of grime, likes moments of heart-wrenching horror, and likes stories of love in a time of war.