Blackbringer by Laini Taylor

"Such were the humble beginnings of the end of the world: the absence of dreams."

Magpie Windwitch is a fairy with extraordinary gifts and a mission: Retrap the genies the humans keep releasing. You see, the genies are really demons, who were sealed into those bottles years ago by the Djinn's chosen champions. Except that the era of the Djinn (those who made the world) and their champions is long past.

So with the demons being released, not only do little 'Pie and her crow comrades face the challenge of fighting the demons (especially the nastiest one she's encountered yet, a demon that seems to uncreate the people/faeries/other demons it encounters), but 'Pie must also find and convince the King of the Djinn that this is a fight worth waking up for. His inclination is to let it all fall apart.

And as if that weren't enough, the false queen Vesper has taken reign of Dreamdark, and she knows Magpie recognizes her as a fake. Under other circumstances, you'd think not much could be more dangerous than a fake queen clinging to her claim at any cost.

Taylor imagines for her readers a world, which though literally unraveling, is full of magic, destiny, and courage. Magpie is a brave and determined heroine with more than a few friends to help her along with way. And Taylor's writing style is endearing and humorous. Of one of the imps, Taylor describes, "It was the least ratlike part of him, his nose, flesh while the reset was fur, and quite spectacularly large, with each nostril spacious enough to fit his big toes into--which he frequently did."

The only parts of Blackbringer that threatened the enchantment of the story and characters were the occasional pro-green assertions about how much humans mess up the Djinn-created world. (I'm extremely sensitive to environmentalist hype, and there was a fair sprinkling of it in this book. In that sense, it's not unlike Ferngully. Do you remember that movie?)

I really wish my library were getting the Dreamdark trilogy. I borrowed this one through an interlibrary loan, but because the second in this trilogy was so recently released, I have to wait a year to request it from another library.