Rating: 3.5 stars (out of 5)
Genre: fantasy
Review: Did you ever think about what happens to the book that don't get written?
In A. J. Hackwith's imagination, they reside in the Library of the Unwritten, a lesser known part of Hell. There, they are presided over, protected by, and under the care of the Librarian. The Librarian is in charge of keeping the books quiet, and making sure none of the character escape from between the covers (except for a few Damsels, who can clearly do better in life). When Claire Hadley, the current Librarian, gets word that, not only has the main characters of one of the books gotten loose, but is talking to its author, she heads topside to intervene and get the character back into its book where it belongs.
Unfortunately, she and her team get caught up in a dispute over the Devil's Bible, a book believed by those in both Heaven and Hell to hold great power. In an effort to keep it out of the hands of a demon who wants to use it for his own nefarious purposes, they seek to return the book to the Library for safekeeping, but must travel through several realms, including Valhalla, on their way. Meanwhile, the Library itself is under seige, and the team must split up. Will they be able to win the fight on two fronts, and still remain strong enough to keep the Lirbary intact?
As with any work of fantasy, this book requires more than a little suspension of disbelief, and readers who characterize themselves as religious may have an ever harder time, given that the subject matter includes a somewhat jaundiced approach to Heaven and Hell, demons and angels. Other readers may appreciate Hackwith's multi-cultural mythologizing, her notion of a literary duel, and her ideas about what can happen when characters become separated from their books.
For fans of The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde, The Library of the Dead by T. L. Huchu, and The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep by H. G. Parry.
