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(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.
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.