The Invisible Library

What a fun read this was! Novels dealing with books exert a strong appeal on a compulsive reader, and this one is no exception: what's more, the titular Invisible Library is a fascinating entity in and of itself. First, because it's a huge repository for incredible amounts of books, and second because of its location: the story postulates that there are many parallel realities coexisting next to one another, and the Library is located in a place belonging to none of them, a location where space and time have practically no meaning. Dusty volumes fill up row upon row of shelves, while modern computers are strategically placed where Librarians might need them, and from the occasional window one can at times see cobble-paved streets lit by gas-lamps. As I said, fascinating...

Irene is a junior Librarian tasked with retrieving a particular book the Library wants, and following the last phase of her planned heist drops us straight into the heart of the story, through a narrow escape from animated stone gargoyles and hounds from Hell that carries the same kind of thrill as a dive into deep waters. Here we learn one of the most important peculiarity about Librarians: they can use Language (a special speech construct that is constantly adapted and modified to suit Librarians' needs) to force inanimate objects like door locks to obey their commands--it's not exactly magic as we usually consider it, but it's an interesting detail and, at times, a very useful tool.

Having managed a successful extraction from this particular alternate world, Irene looks forward to some well-earned rest to be spent doing what she enjoys most--reading books. This was what caused my instant connection with the character, even though she was not fully fleshed yet: Irene might be a thief/spy/adventuress, but above all else she is a reader, one who in the end wants only "to shut the rest of the world out and have nothing to worry about except the next page of whatever she was reading". The author could not have found a better way to endear her to us readers than this, indeed.

There is no rest for the weary though, and Irene's superior Coppelia sends her on a new mission to retrieve a precious volume of Grimm's tales from an alternate London that's usually off-limits because of its chaos contamination, which means that magic and technology clash in unpredictable and dangerous ways. And on top of that, she must take an apprentice with her, a young man named Kai, both an unknown quantity and a departure from Irene's usual solo missions--not to mention that Kai seems to harbor some secrets...

There is little time for Irene to dwell on all this, however, since the version of London in which the two find themselves presents several obstacles to the assignment: a late nineteenth Century alternate with steampunk overtones--think of Zeppelins and steam-powered machines--where Fae, vampires and werewolves coexist alongside normal humans. On top of that, the book Irene is looking for has just been stolen after the murder of its latest owner, and she finds herself working alongside Detective Vale (this world's version of Sherlock Holmes) battling with steam centipedes, clockwork alligators and various other contraptions, while supernatural creatures drive forth their own agendas and a dark figure from the Library's past--the mythical Alberich--extends his murderous shadow over everything and everyone.

This unstoppable flow of surprises and death-cheating adventures keeps the story going with good momentum and at the same time serves to flesh out Irene's character more: what I like about her (apart from her love of books, of course) is that she's skilled but not overconfident (unlike her previous teacher and sometimes competitor Bradamant) and she takes her mentoring duties toward Kai quite seriously, trying to avoid the mistakes Bradamant made with her, when she hogged all the praise and heaped any blame on Irene. Moreover, she's ready to face the dangers inherent in her chosen work--and more than once, in the course of the story, she suffers damage of some sort--but she's not reckless or stupid, nor does she fall into the "heroine needing help" narrative trap. Irene feels quite real as a character, because she's driven and willing to better her position in the Library, but at the same time she's aware of her limitations and knows when to move aside in favor of people with more experience.

On the other hand, the other characters are somewhat less defined: we learn something more about Kai along the way, granted, and we get interesting glimpses about Vale and Bradamant, but they are still... in flux, so to speak, probably waiting for the next installments in the series to get some more flesh on their proverbial bones. The same happens to the concept of the Library itself: we see a few quick flashes of its long corridors filled with books, we learn that there are endless passages and junctions--and this reminded me a little of some kind of multi-dimensional puzzle in which one could get too easily lost--but we know nothing about the creation of the Library, and how it developed over the centuries, and across the worlds. But this will probably be detailed more in the next books...

The overall mood of The Invisible Library reminded me a little of Gail Carriger's Parasol Protectorate series: the coexistence of werewolves and vampires, the steampunk elements, the mysteries hiding behind every corner, but where Carriger's work is a headless romp carried by tongue-in-cheek wit, Cogman's brand of humor is more subdued and far less outrageous--unless she decides to have a refined party crashed by mechanical alligators, that is. The light-hearted fun mixed with more dramatic events creates a good blend that makes for a swift, entertaining read: it might be a little on the thin side, as far as the plot is concerned, yet there are times when some lightness is not only welcome, but rather necessary for a change of pace, and I believe this series might become one of my go-to stories when I want to... take a breath from more intense reads.

There are a few elements that detract from the overall positive experience though: for example, the moments when the characters fall prey to the need for lengthy exposition, going over previous occurrences and recapping them in painstaking detail--to me these segments felt like wading through quicksand where a moment before I was flying on a dirigible. And the Language--fascinating concept that it is--seems to be used too liberally, to the point that it takes on the shape of a convenient plot device rather than a tool to be employed in the direst of circumstances: as if to drive this point home, it seemed to me that Irene's skills were brought in better light when she was momentarily unable to use Language, rather than when she wielded it as a weapon at the drop of a hat.

These little snags notwithstanding, I enjoyed The Invisible Library quite a bit, and will look forward to the next installments in the series, one that I can recommend for its high entertainment value.