Yet another very clever book by Jim C. Hines, who definitely knows what he’s doing when writing Fantasy books.  All of Hines’ books have been good reads and this is no exception.

Book Stats

346 Pages

Fantasy

First book in the series

Characters

The main character of the book is Isaac Vainio, a former Libriomancer field agent and current librarian living in Michigan’s upper peninsula.  He’s a Science Fiction and Fantasy nerd who uses those books to great effect.  As a fan of SciFi and Fantasy it was a lot of fun to see how he used different aspects from classic novels.  I liked Isaac and his very analytic nature and approach to his job.  The other main character of this book is Lena Greenwood, a dryad with some interesting characteristics that will slightly spoil the story if I talk about it too much here, but she’s a fun character who works well with Isaac.  Like all of Hines’ books, the characters are well written and fun  to read about.

Setting

Modern day Michigan, but with a very cool magic system.

Plot

Isaac is working as a librarian when he is attacked by vampires, Lena arrives just in time to help save him, and this leads to the duo uncovering a larger plot with someone trying to destroy vampires and libriomancers alike.

Enjoyment

Yeah, that’s kind of a boring sounding synopsis there, but this is a very solid action/adventure book with a very cool magic system.  So we’ll get into that now.  Libriomancers are able to pull items out of books and use them according to what they’re capable of doing within the novel.  Isaac of course pulls largely from SciFi/Fantasy novels, and it’s great fun to see how he uses his magic.  At one point he pulls a lightsaber  out of a SciFi novel (although he doesn’t call it that by name, probably due to some copyright violation had he used the name), it’s also fun to see him pull a healing potion out of an old D&D book.

The story of this book is very self contained, but like many Fantasy series, it sets the stage for a much larger story that will probably encompass 3 or 4 books.  I’m looking forward to picking up the second book in the series when I have a chance to.

Overall Grade

One of the coolest magic systems I’ve seen in a while, this book is definitely fan-service for those who read a lot of SciFi/Fantasy books, but there’s also a solid story with fun characters in the book.

8/10