The Library at Mount Char

This book is something I don't get. I don't have any idea how good it is objectively, but I personally can't really give more than two stars to it.

So basically here we have some mystical, ancient person (creature?) called Father. He can bring back the dead, live forever and ever, speak all languages, so basically a major overpowered freakshow. He has this amazing library with all his knowledge, where he raised apprentices, every single one responsible for learning one subject, ranging from healing, to war, to time travelling. But now Father is gone, the apprentices are kept away from the library by some weird force and they need to do something.

Mr. Hawkins throws you in right away, with the absolutely weird, freaky apprentices and it took me some time to adjust. Sure, it does add to the mysterious atmosphere, but I personally don't really like it when I don't know shit about what's going on. This thing stayed during the whole book is some sense, which meant that certain events get absolutely no explanation and they feel kind of disjointed, like they don't serve any purpose, just there to freak you out because you don't get it. (I'm referring for example to the sun child part in the library.) Same goes for the mentioned characters. We hear a ton about gods and Barry O'Shea, zombie townspeople, rabid guard dog entities and whatever. But we don't see much about them, it's like most of the world is hidden from us. Don't do this.

The characters we see are... not particularly likeable. The librarians are all fucked up to an extent that I couldn't really connect to them. The two humans in a more prominent role, Steve and Erwin are... well, they're fine. Honestly, none of them were completely badly written, that's not the issues, but I didn't connect with any of them enough to really care if they live or die. The protagonist, Carolyn was a bit frustrating with her disconnect from the normal world sometimes, especially at the end with her and Steve at the library.

The thing is, I don't really know what to say about it, because I don't understand the aim of the story. The prose was pleasant enough to read, in some places a bit too flowery and artsy to me, which I would have been fine with, if I understood the story itself. But the way it was just made me feel like when you're watching some weird comedy from a different country, when things happen and you are sure that the writer was doing something, but there was a huge disconnect between their intention and your perception. (So basically what happened when I showed the show The League of Gentlemen to my friends. I love it. They got nightmares. HA.)

So yeah, I wish good luck to Mr. Hawkins for the future. If he releases another novel, I will most likely read it, just to see if it was his style that didn't suit me or simply this one story. Then we see what comes after that, I guess.