The Burning Page

The Invisible Library series is so much fun. It follows the adventures of Irene, a spy/book thief working for an organization existing outside of time and space known as the Library. She's a great heroine: practical, resourceful, and competent, and she handles the absurd situations in which she tends to find herself with aplomb.

The Burning Page picks up some of the dangling threads from the first book: the former-Librarian-turned-traitor Alberich is back and determined to destroy the Library since its members refuse to surrender it to him. My favorite parts of this installment were Irene's interactions with Alberich, as well as reading about Kai and Irene working together on more orderly worlds that resist the Language (used by Librarians to change reality). It also gives Irene cause to question something she's always taken for granted, and I can't wait to find out how this is addressed in future installments!

Rating: 8/10

Full Review on My Website

The third book of this installment starts off slightly after the end of The Masked City. Irene and Kai have recovered a book from revolutionary France but realize that the Traverse back to the Library has gone up in flames. Kai has no choice but to assume his true dragon form and fly back to London. When it becomes known that many Traverses have the same issue and the Library's old arch rival Alberich is behind it, Irene tries to figure out ways to handle him and possibly attack instead of the defense being put up by the senior Librarians. The story ends with a good resolution with scope for many more adventures.

This book is definitely the best of the series with a very engaging plot. We also get to know more about the Library itself, meet new Librarians, learn about its internal politics and the metaphysics surrounding Alberich's plan to destroy it. Irene is the usual amazing protagonist – supremely confident, calm and composed and able to extricate herself from almost any disastrous situation. However, this book also shows her dealing with the consequences of Kai's rescue, his PTSD and Vale's chaos contamination. There is also an amazing scene between her and Vale, who is so much like her favorite literary detective. The Irene Adler – Sherlock style forbidden attraction between these two is irresistible and hopefully they will get together in the books to come.

The ending of the book is also heartbreaking in a way (for Irene as well) but she does the best she can in the moment. But the next books have been nicely setup and this series can only get better and better.

After 1st Reading: Hero Librarians in a world hopping quest to save the multiverse. Need I say more? This is a great series for book-lovers.

After 2nd Reading: I admit that my previous review is rather short, but I'm not sure what else to say really. This is a page turning adventure with a great climactic showdown of an ending. I loved it.

In which the evil and all-powerful Alberich, renegade Librarian, is threatening to destroy everything and our heroine Irene dashes off almost alone to fight him, without a plan and without resources, making it all up as she goes along, as usual.

It's all dramatic and exciting, but the drama strikes me as overdone, and the excitement is muted because I know that Irene is going to emerge somewhat battered but intact from every apparent disaster, after finding the right commands to utter in the Language.

I find these books quite entertaining at first reading, but they leave me unsatisfied, because the events and the characters don't quite become real to me, and it's hard for me to take seriously the spectacle of a world-destroying monster being stopped in his tracks by a junior Librarian. I think the author is trying too hard to pile on the drama.

I wish fantasy novelists didn't feel the need to create these exaggerated villains: Alberich, Voldemort, Sauron, Acheron Hades, and so on. An ordinary bad guy feels more like real life and is more believable. Yes, I know this is a fantasy novel, but as a reader I prefer to be able to believe in the fantasy while I'm reading it.

It took me a lot longer to read this one. Partially my fault as December was a busy month but there seemed to be a bit of a meandering plot and then a crashing halt rather than an ending. I do hope that the next book in the series takes our heroine in a different direction. While I love her psuedo-Victorian world, maybe its time to take her somewhere else?