I used to go into the library and start series in the middle, usually because my library was really bad about actually having the first one available for me. I always used to like the feeling of being able to understand what was going on in a story even when I didn’t have the full context. And so I feel a bit of nostalgia with this, book 7 of a series I have never read.
The story follows primarily Irene, a Librarian who has apparently been dealing with a long string of assassination attempts that have no intention of stopping. The people targeting her shift throughout the book, and we follow as she and her companions try to understand just who wants them dead of their past foes and how some of them continue to come back after they have most definitely been killed in the past. There’s also a lot to do with the relationships between the Library, the Fey and the Dragons, which I don’t think I ever fully grasped.
I am fully aware that this is the second to last book in the series, and therefore is mostly setting up the climax and conclusion in the final installment. Regardless, there’s a lot of very interesting ideas in here. I was hoping for something like the Thursday Next series and I think I was pleasantly surprised. It’s significantly more straightforward and less surreal than that series, but there are a lot of elements in it that I found hit that sweet spot of fiction about fiction that I like.
Overall, I really enjoyed it but I would suggest maybe starting at the start of the series. If this book is any indication, there are a lot of really interesting plot elements that would be a lot more fun if I had a fuller context of what was going on.