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jacey
My final book of 2015...I really enjoyed the first Invisible Library book, and I was looking forward to this. It certainly didn't disappoint.
It continues the story of Irene, an agent of the Invisible Library which exists between dimensions, and has access to all the alternate earths in the multiverse. The library's purpose is to collect and preserve all the alternate versions of important books that have been published in the various dimensions and the librarians are, essentially, book thieves (or sometimes book-buyers). After the first book, Irene is now the resident librarian in a steampunky alternate London, with her assistant, Kai, and their friend, Vale, a Sherlock Holmesian figure. Their world does have some magic and the Fae are in evidence - mostly hanging out at the Lichtenstein Embassy.
The Fae pull worlds towards chaos, which the powerful dragons strive for order. Dragons can't live in high-chaos worlds while Fae are allergic to order, but there are worlds, such are Irene's, which have a helping of both.
Kai is a young dragon - in human form - which is somewhat unusual. Not only is he a dragon, but he's a dragon prince, with obligations. When Kai is kidnapped and whisked off world to a high-chaos Venice Irene must rescue him or risk an all-out war between the dragons and the Fae which will certainly destroy Vale's alternate world, and may well have far reaching consequences for other worlds and the humans caught in the crossfire.
With the help of the Fae, Silver, a rival of the Guantes (the Fae who have kidnapped Kai in order to start a war) Irene manages to get herself to the high-chaos Venice where Kai is due to be auctioned to the highest Fae bidder, triggering dragon wrath. She has a limited amount of time to spring him from his magical prison
There's a lot to like in here. The setting is imaginative, the pacing keen. Irene's character is resourceful and the supporting characters believable. Kai is out of it for most of the story, but there are hints that the attraction between Irene and Kai is rather more than a teacher-student relationship should be, which is why Irene is doing her best not to act on her feelings. I look forward to seeing how this develops in future books. There's at least one more to come.
