“When Isaac Vainio helped to reveal magic to the world, he dreamed of a new millennium of magical prosperity. One year later, things aren’t going quite as he’d hoped. A newly-formed magical organization wants open war with the mundane world. Isaac’s own government is incarcerating “potential supernatural enemies” in prisons and internment camps.
Surrounded by betrayal and political intrigue, Isaac and a ragtag group of allies must evade pursuit both magical and mundane, expose a conspiracy by some of the most powerful people in the world, and find a path to a better future. But the key to victory may lie with Isaac himself, as he struggles to incorporate everything he’s learned into a new, more powerful form of libriomancy.”
And thus end’th one of my favorite fantasy series. What’s not to like about a librarian who can magically pull things out of books, and who favors sci-fi and fantasy as his chosen genre? Naturally, I was drawn to this premise from the start. And now, sadly, it’s over.
It certainly went out with a bang, though. In the previous book, magic became known to the world at large, and in this one, the consequences of that revelation are spiraling out of control. Hines did an awesome job of projecting what would happen if magic really did show up in our world, and the reactions of the government are, unfortunately, quite predictable. That’s not a strike against the book, however; it’s merely a testament to how well the author has inserted magic into real-world conflicts.
Even so, there are a couple of twists in the story that I didn’t expect, and it kept me engaged in finding out what happens next. There’s very little about this book that’s what you would expect, so as the little surprises were dropped in, I appreciated Hine’s creativity.
I also liked the new characters that debuted in this book, even though we won’t get the chance to see any more of them. One of them really caught my attention, but I can’t really say who because it would likely spoil some of the surprises later in the book. Suffice to say that Hines has fun in this novel exploring the bounds of what might be possible with libriomancy, and it makes me hope that a few spin-off novellas might be in the works.
This book has plenty to delight fans of sci-fi, fantasy, and books in general. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only bookworm to fantasize about my favorite stories being part of the real world, and this series fed that with a ton of wish fulfillment. This is a series that will remain on my shelves for a long time to come.
This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
(Description nicked from Goodreads.)