Libriomancer
Jim C. Hines
ISBN: 9780756407391
Re-read March 13, 2014
So the sequel Codex Born is sitting on my to-read pile, and I dislike heading into sequels without being fresh on the previous installments (although Sanderson is likely to break me of that particular habit with the Stormlight Archive) so I got to read Libriomancer again. Yay!
This book just gets me in the feels. I'm not a magician, but I am a librarian, and this book totally gets it. The joy of finding obscure knowledge, of cataloging and organizing physical artifacts into a coherent and searchable whole, the drive to learn (to read) everything possible, the instinct to share that knowledge (usually by grandstanding). It also relishes (and tortures) the physicality of books and pages and bookshelves, of sagging shelves and dusty rooms and bent covers and broken spines and old paperbacks with decades-old childish repair attempts in bad scotch tape.
In fact, it gets so much of my own passion and life right, I don't even mind the tarantula - er, scuse me - 'fire spider' even though normally that would be a death knell.
I think I did a shorty review on this when I read it first, but I wanted to pop back in and say that it held up quite nicely for a re-read. Even when the motives and identity of the baddie are no longer a surprise, they're still creepy and imposing as a challenge to our heroes.
Finally, you gotta love any book that ends by setting up a threesome with a nonhuman keystone as a workable relationship fix. Mercedes Lackey blew my mind with that way back in Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, and I'm happy to see it pop up again.
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