I was intrigued by the concept when it came up in the Metaphysical libraries episode of the Realms Unknown podcast.

What is it about?

There’s a library, holding all books, in all languages, from all across time. It’s the greatest thing in the planet, with humans and other races taking turn taking control of it, annihilating its previous carer doing so.

And we follow Livira, from her early days as a rescue to her rising in the ranks of the librarians, keepers of said library. From time to time, she manages to access the Exchange, a place between time and space where she meets with Evar, someone who spent decades trapped in a book and otherwise lives inside the library with his siblings who when through the same experience but can’t wait to escape.

Knowledge, pride, politics, racism… mix everything and you’ll have the entry point into the book.

And more

Each chapter is introduced by a short excerpt of what looks like one of the book of the Library. I’m used to this since reading Asimov’s Foundation and the excerpts of the Encyclopaedia Galactica. A bit too much as I have grown used to just skimming through them. But the author played with them, or with the readers. As the library is supposed to contain all books ever written in all universes and times, there’s a lot of common stories, authors… and he placed a lot of hints, reminders, puns and so on. Things you kind of notice once you start paying attention to these introductory paragraphs.

I noticed the first one after one of the first mention of the Mechanism, in which its door is described as “[…] this time it was just a round wooden door, painted green with copper metalworks” (paraphrasing as I don’t have the energy to look for the exact passage in the book). And this is of course a reference to Bilbo Baggins’s home. I snorted when reading this but it just set my mind into looking into such references. A few chapters later, the introduction paragraph is a reference to the Famous Five (aka Six go on and on by Enanald Byten), another is by CS Leylandii, one is from the famous magician Copper Davidfield. He even includes a quote from one of his own book (Prince of Fools). The one I preferred, so far, and which took some time to understand is Always the Bright Side by M.P. Thon. But I know most of these references evades me as I don’t have enough knowledge of English or US litterature to get the hint, either in the authors or the quotes.

Random excerpt

‘What does nostalgia means to a child? An abstraction. A standing stone waiting for them in the mist. Walk a path some decades, any path you like, and the word will gather weight. It will come to you trailing maybes and might-have-beens. Nostalgia is a drug, a knife. Against young skin, it carries a dull edge, but time will teach you that nostalgia cuts – and it’s a blade we cannot keep from applying to our own flesh.’

Final world

Enjoyed the book, my first in the fantastic realism genre.