Things I Like: The Invisible Library

[fadeaccompli]

(This is mostly a repost from my review over on Broken Forum.)

I just finished reading The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. Or possibly rereading, because I read this one in an earlier draft; the author's a friend, so I'm not a completely disinterested party, here.

That said! I quite honestly feel that this is an excellent book. Irene is a Librarian, with capital letters and all because she works for the Library: a vast information archive (mostly in the form of books, but not exclusively so) that sends its agents on interdimensional missions to retrieve, well, books. She gets a mission to a world that's got a Fae infestation, resulting in vampires and werewolves and zeppelins and the occasional giant clockwork centipede attempting to murder you while you were just having a polite talk with a consulting detective about a mysterious murder connected to the book you're trying to find. As one does.

So anyway, it's a delightful romp, with lots of excitement and action and some silliness, and multiple interesting magic-esque systems that get worked out logically and collide in interesting ways. The characters are fun, the story is engaging, it's very fast-paced. There's an obvious sequel hook at the end--and more books coming in the series--but it's quite satisfactory as a standalone novel, I think. The nearest equivalent in feel that springs to mind is Aaronovitch's Rivers Of London, though it's a bit higher on the action and lower on the paperwork/procedural than that one.

The one downside is that it's a UK-only release right now, so if you're in the US, it's hard to get a look at it. I bought my copy from The Book Depository, and I continue to hope it'll get picked up in the US so that I can get a copy of it in ebook form eventually.

Comments

[kore]

Oh, this sounds fun! I love library stories.

[fadeaccompli]

It's great fun! And while the capital letter Library is mostly a staging point for the rest of the adventure, other libraries do indeed come up during the story.

[lizvogel]

This sounds terribly fun, and right up my alley. I doubt my library system can be persuaded to buy a UK-only book, but I'll certainly try them on it.

[fadeaccompli]

I so very wish it had a US release; I adore the book, and it's a lot harder to recommend when most people here can't get it. I ordered my copy from The Book Depository, and it was a reasonable price! But I realize that's a lot to ask people to do based on my recc alone. (And the people I want to make read it don't live near enough that I can lend the book around easily, either. Bah!)

[lizvogel]

Well, right now I couldn't afford the first page, however reasonable the price. ;-) The only books I'm buying these days are ones I can without prevarication count as writing research, and not many of those.

However, the librarian didn't seem to think UK-only was an automatic rule-out factor, so we shall see. Perhaps you will have successfully pimped it in front of many eyeballs, if only one purchase!

[fadeaccompli]

I can hope! ...which makes me wonder if I could get it into the local library. Huuuuh. I know that directly donated books are usually just sold, but I could ask them about how I might help get a copy in stock.

[lizvogel]

Which would be an interesting thing to know for other reasons, too. I've always thought that if I do manage to get a novel published, part of my publicity strategy will be to walk up to my local librarian and say, "Hi, I'm the author. If I donate a copy, can it go into circulation and not just the book sale?"