Spoiler-Free Review of The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

Hello Everyone!

“They thought of everything in terms of stories, with themselves as the main characters.”

I was lucky enough to receive a copy of this book from Penguin Random House and Genevieve Cogman in return for promotional materials and an honest review. I was not paid and this is not a sponsorship.

This story was very fun. How could it not be? By creating a world with magic, supernatural creatures, bad-ass Librarians and a cast of very interesting characters, Genevieve makes sure that the reader will have a good time indulging in her novel. Combining her very educated and serious heroine, Irene, with a quick witted library trainee, Kai, and throwing them into a whole new world with a very Magnus Bane meets Megamind (in the fact that he can’t actually pull of any of the tricks he tries to do) semi-villain Fae, Silver, a renowned detective from an alternate London, Vale, and a ex-mentor of Irene's (who reminds me a whole lot like Missy from Doctor Who), Bradamant, this book has every character that you never knew you wanted. Besides the cast of characters, the setting of the story was interesting. As the majority of the work is split between the Library itself and an alternate London, the audience gets to fall in love with the idea of an inter-dimensional Ultra-Library while also getting swept up in the chaos of a steampunk feeling alternate London, with all its technology and craziness. I do have to say, while I really enjoyed the direction of The Invisible Library and the complexity of its settings and themes, I also believe some aspects of the Invisible Library could have been altered for reader’s convenience and overall understanding. Not every element worked as well as the idea of alternate worlds that are balanced between technology and nature or the concept of the Library itself. I think that the severity of the story’s “big bad” and the danger that he presented for Irene and Kai was lost on me as I was trying to understand parts of the story’s complexity (for instance, the various fighting brotherhoods and chaos creatures of the alternate London).

On a different note, I would like to applaud Genevieve for creating one of my favorite magic systems to date, The Language. Only available to librarians that have sealed themselves to the Library, the Language can be cast as a kind of spoken magic. It tends to perform tasks that the Librarians ask it to do, like open doors or make stone gargoyles harden back into stone, if the task is something that that object wants to do naturally or is built to do naturally. Doors want to lock and unlock. Stone wants to be hard. Gears have a tendency to stick on their own, so it is easy for Librarians to ask them to stop working. I loved that the Language developed as any other real language would. One of the main jobs of Librarians is even to bring back books from other dimensions that have new words in them so that the Librarians can have an arsenal of words at their disposal. It is like the magic of a bibliophile.

Overall,I very much enjoyed this book and had a blast working with Penguin and Genevieve to promote the book. While there are flaws, every book has flaws and, as the books are being released in the UK before they are being released in the US, the second book looks to be even better than this one. I am excited to see where this series will go and what adventures Irene and Kai will go on next. If you are looking for a fun, complex book that doesn’t take itself too seriously but has lots of adventure, this book is totally for you!

Overall:

3 out of 5 stars

-Jaime

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