The quirk in the voice of the story was what had me hooked instantly.  It’s a throwback to the stories from the "days of yore" but modernized, making it much more relatable and easier to read.  The premise is an interesting one—someone’s stolen the stories from the world.  It’s a fairy tale adventure of who dunnit and why that’s certainly no easy feat for the main character.  She sloughs her way through the trials and tribulations of the fairy tale world and Sonja certainly doesn’t spare her an ounce of suffering.  To me, that just makes the story that much better.  Nikki doesn’t have an easy way out and the adventure, most of the time (especially after the honeymoon phase wears off), is anything but fun.

Nikki has to fight her way through all of the tropes she’s come across during her own reading adventures in this new world, accessed through the basement of the library she works in.  At the beginning she was a bit delusional when it came to her job description, thinking that librarians went on crazy trips in order to find all of the books stacked in front of her.  Needless to say, the straight and narrow library marm slapped her down although, of course, there’s a notion of "be careful what you wish for" lingering right along side Nikki throughout.

The one issue I had with this story was with the voices of the characters—they all sounded the same to me.  Even after Sonja’s explanation regarding learning different languages, it didn’t explain it for me.  Usually when someone speaks a second language, it’s the proper version of it (think of learning Spanish in school) so the air of inadvertent propriety would be there in those whose first language is Goblin or Dragon.  But Nikki spoke in that same tone, pretty much throughout.  She sort of came into her own voice towards the end but not enough in my eyes.  I would have liked to see variations in dialect between the creatures instead of having them all sound like British aristocrats.  Or at least have Nikki sound like the young girl she is (I want to say college age?) instead of an English noble.  I guess it plays into the whole homage to classic fairy tales but it’s something that stuck with me throughout.  Obviously it wasn’t enough for me to stop reading but it was niggling nonetheless.

Aside from that, the world that Sonja’s built is just fantastic.  Vivid images and spins on standard tropes makes this story very much worth the read.  She’s taken fairy tale standards and flipped them violently on their heads in order to suit this world and I love it.

My favorite part had to have been the ending, something that certainly goes against the grain of a traditional fairy tale but it makes the work all the more poignant.  It was unexpected and, really, I was thankful that it ended the way it did.  I’m not a fan of everything snapping back to normal in order to round out the work type of endings.  There’s much more realism if not everything is so perfect.

Tally this one onto the "don’t miss" list.  This was one of the first online serials I ever read (I honestly can’t remember if it was the first but it was read around there) and I’m glad because, like Sarah said in her review, it set the standard for the rest of the serials I read and it left me with a good impression of online serials in general.  Read this work.  You’ll certainly enjoy it.

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Fiction Murdered? is all about the age old art of storytelling, with a new twist—the story is about the stories.  It follows the perilous adventures of Nikki the Library Volunteer, and her gremlin sidekick Jubrin, who are on a mission to find out where all the stories went, and save them if they can.

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I love the premise: a librarian out to retrieve fiction from whoever mysteriously stole it. Who would make a better defender of the written word?

The protagonist and her gremlin Jubrin banter cleverly through an imaginary world that pokes fun at the standard story-telling conventions. It’s a light, fun read. After [more . . .]