The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman offers the familiar trope of a magical place filled with books. I was immediately reminded of TNT’s The Librarians.
Suffice it to say this is different, and has a decidedly more urban fantasy/ steampunk feel to it.
You see, in this library time stops. So long as you’re there, you don’t age. It is filled with many, but not all, books written throughout the multiverse. On occasion, an author on a parallel world might write a familiar book that has a slight variation on all the others. Catcher in the Rye, for instance, might have its ending slightly altered in an obscure corner of Creation.
So, researchers in the library send out agents to retrieve (that is, steal) these rare manuscripts and bring them back for studying. Researchers are older agents. While time stops in the library, every mission outside its doors results in aging. When agents grow too old for field work, they ascend to research and send the youngsters out to fetch manuscripts for them.
There are doors to other libraries throughout the multiverse, and our heroine finds herself traveling to a restricted world filled with fae pretending to be human, a villain who understands the library’s secrets and can don the skins of dead humans, and a partner who seems a little off and perhaps not quite human.
Since this parallel world has action occurring in Victorian England, we get airships, the British Museum, a Holmes-esque character, and plenty of witty Briticisms to go with the usual batch of shape-shifters, creating a nice blend of fantasy and steampunk.
I thoroughly enjoyed it.
As of Jan. 10, 2017, the third book in the series is complete.
JR
Categories: Best Sellers, Science Fiction / Fantasy
Tags: author Cogman, author Genevieve Cogman, British alternative history, British author Genevieve Cogman, British best sellers, British fantasy, British fantasy best sellers, British science fiction, Genevieve Cogman, the invisible library book, the invisible library novel, the invisible library review, writer Cogman, writer Genevieve Cogman