The Untold Story ends Cogman’s wonderful The Invisible Library series. We’ve followed
Irene, a librarian whose job it is to acquire rare books from parallel worlds to
the Library to stabilize the universe. But we’ve never learned how or why the
Library came to be in the first place.
In the last
book, Irene is trying to uncover just that. Prompted by the greatest enemy of
the Library, Albrecht, she sets out to find the origin story. But where
Albrecht wants to destroy the Library, Irene has other plans. But this time it
seems the Library itself is out to get her.
This was an
excellent finish for the series. All the main characters were there, Irene
learned a lot about her own origins as well as the Library’s, and the focus
stayed fairly well on the task. The events of the finale were perfect for the
idea of the series about stories keeping the world in balance. And I especially
loved how not all that much changed after all, Irene and her friends ending up
exactly where they wanted to be.
I will miss
this series, but I’m happy with how it ended.
The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman has advanced to its seventh
book. It’s been an interesting series so far, with slightly uneven quality when
it comes to the plots; some are really convoluted, some more simple. The Dark Archive sits somewhere in the middle, with a fairly straightforward plot and
multiple adversaries.
The series is set in a universe where there are several
parallel earths in various stages of development, with similarities to ‘ours’ in
those eras, but with some differences too, like a world where Nazis weren’t
defeated, for example. The world where the main characters spend most of their time is Victorian with airship travel and other steampunk elements,
but there are highly advanced far future societies as well, and everything in
between. The parallel worlds fall on spectrum from highly orderly to high
chaos, with dragons ruling over the first and the fae the latter. Humans are
found in all worlds, but they don’t have much say in how they are governed by
the more powerful forces.
In the middle of everything is the Library that exists between
worlds, connecting them through libraries. Its job is to maintain some sort of
balance between order and chaos. This it does by collecting books from each
world to the Library that anchors them. Librarians are more thieves and spies
than anything else, and none more so than the main character Irene.
There are, of course, forces that try to push the worlds off
balance, and Irene, with the help of her dragon apprentice—current love
interest—Kai, and recurring cast of characters, has the thankless job of
thwarting them. In this seventh book, two former foes that she has believed
dead return. As always, it’s much down to Irene’s ingenuity to make sure
everyone survives, even if it means that the enemy lives to try again.
These books are very much plot-driven, and issues like
romance are secondary; heavy on action and light on emotions. The romance
between Irene and Kai comes across as an afterthought, and after several books
it still doesn’t feel believable. Partly this is because the two are very
different, partly because the reader never sees them in normal situations where
they might have time for their romance. But at least Kai has a proper role in
this one. There’s a new character too, Irene’s fae apprentice Catherine who
seems like a good addition.
Once again, Irene’s world is badly shaken with information
concerning her real parent—though this reader at least had suspected it already.
And the book ends with an introduction of an entirely new force working behind
the scenes. Time will tell whether they are for or against the Library. I, for
one, will definitely continue with the series to find out.
I’ve neglected my reading blog again, which means I have six
books to review since the previous post―not including the books that I have
skipped earlier.It’s been a good month
and a half with old favourites and new interesting finds. Here’s the summary.
Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler
Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler was a brilliant
find. It wasn’t at all what I expected based on the description and the sample chapters. I thought I was getting a swashbuckling
pirate story with magic. What I got was a humongous steel ship filled with monsters
and teenage mages, who have no idea where the ship is going and why, and who's
steering it. Isoka, the main character, has to find her place in the strange
society on the ship she's been brought to against her will, and figure out how
to gain control of the ship so that she can return home and save her sister.
But nothing is how she hopes it would be, not even her.
The book is marketed as YA, but despite
the age of the characters, their life experience and the problems they face are
not those of teenagers. It's all about survival. Isoka is a fairly unlikeable
main character, and she doesn't really improve with softer characteristics she
gains, as she lacks the insight to go with them. I actually preferred her as a
cold-blooded killer. There was a bit too many fight scenes―the story goes from
fight to fight that become repetitive―and the ending seemed slightly rushed.
The epilogue didn't really make it stronger, but since the original problem of
saving Isoka's sister is yet to happen, I'm looking forward to reading the next
book in the Wells of Sorcery series.
Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron
Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron is
the first book in DFZ, a new series set in Aaron’s post-apocalyptic, dragon and
magic filled Detroit. Opal has a job cleaning unclaimed apartments after their
owners die. On one such mission, she finds more than she expects and gets gangsters
after her.
Opal is a great character with serious
dad issues, and Nik, her side-kick, is an interesting companion. There’s a lot
of action, magical and mundane, as the pair tries to find the site of a magical
ritual that just might bring them a lot of money. Needless to say, it wasn't as
easy as that. I'll definitely read the next book too.
The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman
The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman
is book six in The Invisible Library series. This time round Irene and Kai have
to team up with a group of criminals to steal a painting for a villain straight
from the Bond movies. After the previous book where political machinations pushed
the pair to the edge of their skills, this was a rather boring addition to the
series. Kai especially was a let-down after becoming a more assertive,
interesting character in the previous book. A new political plot is brewing,
however, so I’ll keep with the series.
Where Winter Finds You by J.R. Ward
Where Winter Finds You by J.R. Ward is
the latest addition to her long Black Dagger Brotherhood series. It’s marked as
only half a book, but at 480 pages it’s long enough. It’s a second chance love
story, a follow-up for The Shadows where Trez lost his beloved Selena. A woman
has moved in Caldwell who resembles Selena perfectly and who dreams of a lover
she knows is Trez. He’s convinced his love has been returned to him, but how is
that possible, when Theresa has lived a full life already. I must admit I
couldn’t see how this could be brought to a satisfying conclusion either, but
in the end, the story worked out perfectly. It wasn’t the best BDB book there
is, but like always, it was full of emotions that the reader is pulled into,
only to emerge tearful and happy in the end.
The Fowl Twins by Eoin Colfer
The Fowl Twins by Eoin Colfer starts a
spin-off series for his excellent Artemis Fowl series. Artemis’s little
brothers, twins Myles and Becket, are now eleven and ready for adventures of
their own. Myles is like Artemis, a genius bent on surpassing his big brother,
but not inclined to criminal activities. Becket is more physical of the pair,
with an interesting ability to talk with animals―not that anyone believes he
actually can do it.
The adventure they are pulled into is
typical fast-paced mayhem. Unlike with Artemis books, which are set in the
fairy realm, this takes place in the human world, and the bad guys are humans
too, a duke and a nun of all people odd. But it wouldn’t be an Artemis spin-off,
if fairies weren’t involved. Humans are after fairies and it’s up to the twins
to save them with the help of LEP specialist Lazul Heitz. Artemis makes a cameo
appearance―he’s on a mission to Mars―as does Holly Short, the LEP officer from
Artemis books. It’s a fun book that suits adults perfectly too, even though it’s
aimed at ten-year-olds. And I hope the subsequent books take place in the fairy
realm because that’s where the magic truly happens.
A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh
A Madness of Sunshine is the first
thriller by my favourite paranormal romance author Nalini Singh. It’s set in
rural New Zealand where the author lives, and is inspired by Nordic noir books.
The story is fairly straightforward: a young woman goes missing and practically
everyone is a suspect. Only, they really aren’t; most of them are dismissed
easily and if the author attempted to build an atmosphere of mistrust, it doesn’t
really work. There are only a couple of plausible suspects and among them the
guilty are found. The action is slow and the body count low.
It’s an interesting book nonetheless.
Singh can write great characters and as this is very much a character-led book,
it’s a pleasure to read. There are two point of view characters, a woman who
returns home to recover from a past tragedy and a cop who has taken a job in a
small town to recover from a past tragedy. They connect early on, and even
though this isn’t a romance, the two getting to know each other carries most of
the book. There aren’t great twists in the plot, but the ending is satisfying,
even if some motivations of the suspects remain baffling even after the end.
Six books read in six weeks don’t sound
much, but there are a few books that I have started and not finished. At this
point I’m still three books short of my Goodreads reading challenge of
sixty-five books, but I’m confident I’ll be able to make it. I’ll keep you
posted―I hope.
The Invisible Library series truly matures
in this fifth book, The Mortal Word. The story-line that began in the previous
book about the peace conference between the fae and the dragons continues, with
extremely high stakes. A murder has taken place, which threatens the
negotiations, and Irene, with her friend Detective Vale, is called in to
investigate. The plot is complicated, with multiple suspects who all seem
plausible from the beginning. Even the Library is implicated, which causes
Irene a great deal of worry. She has to use all her skills and ingenuity to
bring clarity to the situation. Luckily, she has by now enough experience of
both dragons and the fae to pull it off.
Irene has learned a lot during the
course of the series and grown in strength. I’m not sure, however, that she has
grown as a person all that much. The focus of the books has always been on the
action, leaving character development to a backburner. For example the
revelations concerning Irene’s parents were staggering to her, yet the one time
they are present in the same world, she doesn’t even meet them. I found that a
really odd turn of events.
Lack of character growth is
especially true when it comes to side characters, Kai the most important among
them. He is only described from Irene’s point of view, and the few chapters
there have been in his point of view have concentrated on action. He still very
much comes across the way Irene first pictured him, as an immature young man,
and the attempts to give him some depth in the past couple of books haven’t
really worked. I had hoped that now that he is no longer Irene’s apprentice, he
would mature a little, but he was absent for much of the book, and so that didn’t
happen. The few times Irene concerns herself with him and his feelings, she
feels pity or fear for him, which I find to be the emotions of an older sister
or a mother, or the teacher she was.
This reflects on the romantic
relationship, too, that has been building between Irene and Kai. The reader is
supposed to understand that the two are falling in love—or at least developing some sort of feelings—but the one time that there was room for it in the book,
the door closed before anything happened. And I don’t mean I required a
description of the bedroom action. I wanted the romance that preceded it.
Unfortunately the reader isn’t given access to it, which makes the entire
romance feel unreal. I hope this improves in books to come.
Other minor characters, even the
recurring ones, remain fairly two-dimensional too. The villains of the piece
were given much more depth, which obviously improves them greatly. The fae
especially are interesting with their affinity to stories and tendency to
formulate themselves according to them. With impressive villains, the final
battle is impressive too, and the solutions aren’t easy, especially since Irene
has a tendency to handle everything herself. Maybe one day she’ll learn to
delegate.
This book ends with a new chapter
beginning in Irene’s life that promises to be interesting. I’m eagerly looking
forward to the next book in the series to find out how that turns out.
It’s been five years since I’ve posted on this blog, and I
think it’s time to revive it. I haven’t stopped reading, or reviewing books; I just
published the reviews on my other blog, Susanna Writes. I’m not entirely sure
writing two blogs is sensible, but I’m about to give it a go—again—anyway. It’s one of those things that make sense at the beginning of a new
year. So here goes.
It’s been my habit for the past couple of years to write a
list of books that I hope to read at the beginning of the year. There are so
many books being published, that it’s hard to keep track of them all. With a
list, I’ll at least remember the most interesting ones. So far, I haven’t once
read everything on the list, as I keep reading outside it, but it’s worked well
otherwise. If you want to know what I read last year, here’s a post I wrote on
my other blog (although, in hindsight, I should probably have published it on
this one).
This year, I pledged to read sixty books in Goodreads Reading Challenge, meaning that I should read five books a month. For the past
two years, I’ve read fifty-five books a year, so I’m not entirely hopeful that
I’ll be able to do it, but it won’t be for the lack of reading if I don’t.
The list for 2019 has sixty-nine books. Fifteen are
transfers from the previous list, eight of which were already on the list
before that one. Only the books that I really think I want to read, even if I
didn’t find time for them before, made it to this year’s list too. Thirteen books
are published this year, and they mostly belong to ongoing series by my
favourite authors. The rest are mostly books that I already own, but haven’t
got around reading, or belong to series that I haven’t managed to catch up with
yet. I even went through my Kindle to see what gems I had hidden there, and
added them on the list.
My list is heavy on urban fantasy and fantasy: thirty UF
books and nineteen fantasy books. That pretty much reflects my reading habits
in general. Everything else is genre fiction too; it’s seldom that I read
literary fiction these days. There are ten sci-fi books that I want to read,
but only one contemporary romance, which is odd, considering that I write them
myself, but those tend to be the books that I add on my list as I come across
them. Here are some of the books that I’m especially eager to read this year, in
no particular order.
Summoned to the Thirteenth Grave by Darynda Jones. This is
the last book in her Charley Davidson UF series of a grim reaper that I absolutely love, so it’s with part
eagerness and part dread that I wait for it to come out. The publication date
is January 15, so not long to wait anymore. And then it will be over. Forever.
Vicious and Vengeful by V.E. Schwab. I love everything she
writes, and I expect to find these two books exciting too. I got the first as a
birthday present last year, but then waited to read it until I had the second
book too, which I got for a Christmas present. So those go to the top of my
reading pile.
Wolf Rain by Nalini Singh is the latest in her long Psy-Changeling
paranormal romance series. There hasn’t been a weak book yet, so when it comes
out in June, I’ll be reading it instantly. And she’ll probably publish other
books this year too that aren’t on my list, and I’ll be reading all of them
too. This one doesn’t have a cover yet.
The Savior by J.R. Ward is another auto-buy. It’s the book
seventeen in her Black Dagger Brotherhood UF series of vampire warriors, and each book has been excellent.
She’s publishing other books this year too, and all will go on my list. The
first of those is Prisoner of Night, which is set in the same BDB world,
and is published next week.
The Wicked King by Holly Black is the second book in her
Folk of the Air series of fairies and humans living among them, and it’s
published January 8. The first book was exciting, and I expect the follow up to
live up to its predecessor.
Empress of Forever by Max Gladstone is a space opera
published in June. I’d hoped there would be a new Craft Sequence book, because
the next one can’t come fast enough, but I’m sure this will be great too.
Another book by him that I’m waiting for, written with Amal El-Mohtar, is This is How You Lose the Time War that comes out in July. I’m
not exactly sure what genre that one belongs to, but it has everything, spies, time-travel,
and love.
Brave the Tempest by Karen Chance is
the latest in Cassandra Palmer UF series. It’s been too long since the previous
book and this one can’t come fast enough. Until then, I can return to her UF
world with Siren’s Song, a shorter story, which doesn’t have a publication date
yet, but should come out soon.
That’s just a small sample of what’s
to come. I also look forward to reading Atlas Alone by Emma Newman, fourth book
in her Planetfall series, Exit Strategy and Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells, which
belong to her Murderbot Diaries series, and Raven Tower, the new Ann Leckie
book. And, truly, all books on my list are those that I want to read. It’s just
that occasionally I have to prioritise.
The first book of the year has been
selected already too. That’s The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman. It’s the
fifth book in her Invisible Library series, and so far it’s very good. I’ll write
a review once I’m finished. Until then, let me know what you’ll be reading this
year.
