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From: Titus G <noone@nowhere.com>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: The House in the Cerulean Sea. TJ Klune.
Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2024 17:02:42 +1200
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
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The House in the Cerulean Sea. TJ Klune.
(Multiple award winner about 2011?)

Extremely Upper Management of the Department in Charge of Magical Youth,
(DICOMY), send Rules and Regulations agent, Linus Baker, on a supposedly
routine investigation of the safety of the magical children in an island
orphanage. Baker's desk at work is in an open hall with 14 rows of 20
column deep desks and there are some fascinating bureaucratic rules.
Magical children, feared and therefore hated by the public, are raised
in "orphanages". This orphanage on a Sprite's island in a sky blue sea,
houses extreme cases such as an anti-christ, a gnome, a phoenix,
sprites, a wyvern, a shape shifter.
It is mainly a fairy tale about social prejudice against those too
different from the norm, (the non-magical), expressed as a love story
when strictly formal agent Baker takes his tie off, becomes Linus and
finds love for a family of magical misfits. The emotional manipulation
is blatant but it still worked for me just outweighing all the social
preaching reflecting Klune's own experience of prejudice as a
homosexual. I enjoyed it despite its verbosity of 400 pages and fairy
tale nature.
The no-need-to-worry-about-binding Kindle edition is omly US$.99c
About half a star less than 4.4 stars.

Seanan MacGuire: "this book is very close to perfect".