I very much enjoy the genre of books sometimes referred to as ‘urban fantasy’ such as the Ben Aaronovitch Rivers of London series, or the Sarah Painter Crow Investigations books, and I also enjoy Jodi Taylors time travelling historian books in the St Mary’s series, and these Genevieve Cogman books are often referred to in reviews of these books, so I thought I should give them a go.
The premise is that a secret library exists in a universe of parallel worlds whose librarians travel between worlds retrieving rare books. These worlds range from having strong Magical influences, and being ruled by Fae (fairies, vampires, werewolves etc) to having strong logical control and being ruled by Dragons, to somewhere in-between. There is much unrest and no love lost between the dragons and the Fae, with neither side giving much thought to the humans who also inhabit all the worlds. The Librarians are human, but with some extra powers inferred on them by the Library, and they are basically trying to keep the peace, and stop humans from being badly effected by what is going on.
I didn’t instantly love the book the way I have with some other similar books, but I like it enough (at the time of writing this review, I’m on book three in the series, so I liked it enough to keep reading!)
Sarah Wray Writer 