I wasn't as into this one as I was her previous book, but I did like it.
Elisabeth Scrivener is a mystery orphan* raised at one of the Great Libraries--libraries in this world being places where the books may eat you. She's lived there all her life, loves it, and at age 16, is an apprentice and is looking forward to becoming a Warden someday. And then the director gets murdered, Elisabeth has to kill one of the attack grimoires, and she gets suspected of the crime of murder. While that blows over "relatively" easily, she finds out something even more sinister is going on, and the only person that believes her is Nathaniel Thorn, an 18-year-old orphan sorcerer and the last from a great house that scares the shit out of everybody. Nathaniel also has a demon servant, Silas, who perennially works for the family. Those two are the only ones that will help her, along with her bestie Katrien, who's still at the Library and on her side from a distance.
* See spoiler space for more thoughts on this.
That's the general plotline, I definitely feel like there were some plot details I was missing periodically though. Basically, bad guy has evil scheme involving taking down libraries and fucking with demons, and he's so popular and kind and rich that nobody buys it--and of course at one point he gets Elisabeth thrown in a loony bin. Happily, she escapes. This book doesn't have that many characters in it, but I did really like Mercy and Parsifal, minor characters that crop up here and there and are on her side.
Mostly this book is about the trio of Elisabeth, Nathaniel, and Silas. Elisabeth is plucky and determined and not at all fazed by general weirdness since she grew up where the books try to eat your fingers (there is definitely some snark about that). Nathaniel has a tragic backstory of losing the rest of his family at age 12 and binding Silas to him so that he still had someone in his life. And Silas may be a demon, but he's unfailingly kind to them both and so obviously a being of Good Heart despite his origins, that they make a lovely little family that take care of each other. It's all very sweet and my favorite thing about the book. I heart Silas most of all, I think everybody does.
But plotwise I was a bit muddled--maybe others might not have that problem, I'm not sure-- at times. And there's definitely a huge missed opportunity in the story that bugged me. And it feels a bit insular to be only focused on those three at times--their world seems kind of small-ish., even though people move in and out of the plot so maybe that's just my impression. But overall, those things didn't bother me enough to really dock the star rating. Four stars.
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Since Elisabeth seems to "belong to the Library" in some mysterious way, and she doesn't tend to get injured, and seems to have magical resistance, I was totally expecting some cool origin story for her, like "she just manifested as a child of the Library, not of humans born!" or "she's some kind of fairy!" or whatever. I was very disappointed that this was NEVER followed up on or even touched. Come on, plot wasted!
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