Review: "Libriomancer" by Jim C. Hines - 4/5 Stars

Jim C. Hines' Libriomancer is the first book in a quartet of books following magical books and the people who can tap into that magic. 

Isaac is a libriomancer, someone who can use their magic to pull things out of books and make them real, a librarian, and fan of "Dr. Who" and "Firefly". That, alone, was more than enough to make me pick up this book; not to mention the pretty cover and the possibilities it hints at with a man pulling a magical sword out of a book.

Yes, this was a cover buy. I succumbed to the "shiny" of the cover. So much so, in fact, that I neglected to notice the tarantula perched on the shoulder of the main character pictured on the cover. That's right, it's not just a spider, it's a tarantula. Oh, and when he gets angry or anxious? He bursts into flames.

I hate spiders.....like, HAAAATE spiders. And they made this one pyrotechnic.

Despite that, by the end of this book, Jim Hines had me rooting for Smudge - that's little pryo-spidey's name - which is pretty miraculous. Convincing me to like spiders is about as likely to happen as someone convincing Voldemort to give up his life of villainy to open a chic pastry-shop. Never gonna happen.

Vampires are trying to start a war, someone is taking control of vampires, and the most powerful libriomancer they've got just up and disappeared, along with all his enforcers.

The tone of this book is light-hearted, filled with characters making quips at one another and cracking jokes - most of which are funny. Pretty much any magical creature you could think of is in this story. (No unicorns, yet, but I'm holding out hope for the rest of the series.) If you've ever read any of the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, these are similar in tone and pacing. And although the story mostly takes place in modern-day Michigan (with a pit-stop on the moon), we're thrown into the magical pretty much from chapter 1.

"Normal?" she repeated. "Yesterday you fed me cake from Wonderland so we could ride your spider into a magical basement and fight a vampire."

By the way, that's Wonderland...as in Alice's Wonderland. Lovers of books will delight in seeing some of their beloved stories brought to life as Isaac, and other characters, pull objects from well-known and loved novels. It is completely obvious Jim Hines is a fan of books.

"This place...bookstores, libraries...they're the closest thing I have to a church."

Can I get an "A-men!"? Be still my beating heart. I think I fell in love with Isaac after reading that.

"By entering our territory, you acknowledge that you are leaving human law behind. Any act of aggression-"

"Can we get the short version please?" I asked.

The woman rolled her eyes. "Behave, or we eat you."

"Got it."

This is a book about book lovers, for book lovers. There are many books mentioned by title throughout this book and most of them are real. (There is a bibliography in the back of the book, indicating which titles were made up for the purposes of this book.) I've already picked up the next 3 books in the series, and each of them contain bibliographies, as well.

Hmmm....Maybe someone should create a reading challenge. We could call it The Libriomancer Reading Challenge. How many have you read?

Review: "In Too Deep" by Brandy L Rivers - 2/5 Stars

*Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

In Too Deep by Brandy L. Rivers sounded like it would be right up my alley. The main character, Fallon, is a magical tattoo artist and the love interest, Brody, is a hunky werewolf motorcycle mechanic. I'd also heard that Fallon is portrayed as actually tougher than Brody, and thought the idea refreshing of not following the typical weak-female meets strong magical male trope. The author is also local to my area (love supporting local authors!) and her story takes place in the Pacific Northwest. Unlike another popular YA series, though, Edenton is no Forks. There is no Edenton, WA but there is an Edenton in North Carolina and it looks lovely.

Despite all this had going for it, I was disappointed in the execution. Normally, YA novels are written in first person - sometimes third person - and tend to stick to one or two view points. This one was written in third person, but with omniscient tones, and followed at least half a dozen view points! If not for the synopsis on the back of the book, there were many times I caught myself wondering, Who's story is this, anyway? Not only do we get yanked back and forth between points of view (sometimes on the same page), but there were several times where we'd finish a scene, only to be thrown backward to repeat the scene in someone else's viewpoint. I didn't feel like there was a good reason to repeat these scenes, and it stalled the pacing of the book and was, frankly, annoying.

I'm not against books following multiple points of view, but if that's the route you're going to go, it's important that your characters be so distinct, the reader is never confused about whose viewpoint they're following. Rivers failed at this, as well. I was constantly confused by who was speaking when multiple characters started talking. Sometimes a character would say something, and before that, I had no idea they were even in the room. Probably the worst example of this is when I realized that for several pages a character I thought was female was actually male. Flipping back to earlier in the book, I realized that we were told this information, but the cast in this book is so huge and the characters all have the same voice, so I'd forgotten who this character was.

I'm certainly not in the majority of my opinion on this book, which is fine, and I suspect the higher reviews are coming from younger readers. I get it. The magic in this book has some really cool moments! And the variety is everywhere! There's druid magic, shaman magic, mages, werewolves, vampires, and even pixies. The problem the characters had to face was also interesting, and I appreciated that the roots of the problem began before this story did, so you got the sense this world had existed before the beginning of the book, which shows the author did think about her world before writing this. I expect this series to perform very well with younger audiences (though, be warned, there are explicit "sexy-times" in the second half of this book, and definite trigger-warnings for rape).

Rivers clearly took a chance with her choice of writing style that seems to be paying off for her, but personally, I'll pass on the rest of the series. Such a shame.