Review - The Secret Chapter by Genevieve Cogman

The Secret Chapter (Invisible Library, 6)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan Macmillan, 14 November 2019
PB, e, 336pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for a free advance e- copy of this book via NetGalley.

I've loved Cogman's Invisible Library series from the start. As an avid reader, the idea of a pan-dimensional Library staffed by kick-ass librarian-spies who play a valiant role in keeping the forces of chaos at bay across multiple words is just compelling. And Cogman's hero, Irene - a cross between book-lover and ruthless assassin - is wonderful. I think I've lost a bit of my heart to her.

So a new instalment is an eagerly awaited event, and I devoured this one once I got it on my e-reader. It's essentially a heist story - Irene and Kai have to team up with a pretty shady bunch (a gambler, a master thief, an IT guru, a scorching driver...) to steal... an object - not a book this time - from a tightly controlled museum. The team consists of both Fae and Dragons, and there are trust issues besides - some of them haven't even heard of the Truce! - so lots of scope for misunderstandings and mistakes, and it seems to fall to Irene to hold things together.

In this book Cogman is deliberately bouncing her story off classic heist tropes, walking a narrow path between, on the one hand, taking them too seriously and, on the other, just sending them up. So we have the Casino Scene (Irene done up in a little black dress and playing the gambler's moll), the crime boss's Island Base (complete with shark tank), the Getaway, the Shakedown, and many more. They're all handled deftly, dramatic and tense but just a little bit knowing - reflecting the fact that Cogman's Fae are creatures who by their nature aspire to fulfil archetypes, the more successful ones drawing others into their stories. They're opposed to the dragons, who stand for Order and Stability but - as gradually becomes clear in The Secret Chapter - not always in a way that leaves much scope for the freedom of the individual.

Amidst the almost nonstop action, this book begins to tease out such those underlying strains in Cogman's universe (Libraryverse?) revealing some new rivalries and teasing ethical dilemmas (Irene, worrying, reflects that nobody - Fae, Dragons or even the Library itself with its cheerful disregard of others' property - really possesses any moral high ground). We learn more about Irene's family (annoying, but dear to her) and - perhaps - glimpse the well-guarded history of the Dragons themselves.

And besides that we have Cogman's trademark wit ('An attempt by vampires to take over the Conservative party in Great Britain', 'The United Kingdom... did attempt to leave the European Union last year, but apparently that was prompted by demonic interference...') and some sharp writing ('as elegant as mathematics and as perfect as frost', 'Paranoia raised flags in Irene's mind and threw up fortifications'). It makes for a book that is simply a joy to read - deeply atmospheric where it should be, properly exciting when anything's going on as it generally is, and tender too. This is a series that shows absolutely no sign of losing pace, and I'm already impatient for the next.

Only two things I regretted.

First, not enough Vale.

Need. More. Vale.

Secondly - Genevieve, just what did you think you were putting Irene through in that scene towards the end? Doesn't she deserve a bit of dignity? I was almost shocked. Honestly.

For more about The Secret Chapter, see the publisher's website here.

Review - The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman

The Mortal Word (Invisible Library, 5)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan, 29 November 2018
PB, e 418pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of The Mortal Word.

Who would kill for a book...?

Cogman's Invisible Library books have quickly become one of my favourite fantasy series, and she has covered so much, and created such a vivid world, that I'm slightly surprised to see that this is only the fifth of them.

The Mortal Word takes us to a Belle Epoque-ish Paris, complete with grand hotels, risque theatre, anarchists - and plenty of danger. A vital conference is being held, which could shape the future of the worlds - but someone wants it to fail, and is prepared to kill, if that's what it takes.

Questions abound. Irene Winters and her associates, Vale, the Great Detective and Kai, prince of Dragons, are summoned to investigate. But due to the dainty diplomacy in train they will also have to work with a representative of the Fae. With so many agendas and rivalries, can the team stay together long enough to outwit the unseen enemy - and is the Library itself as blameless as Irene would like to think?

What are the Fae up to?

What are the Dragons up to?

What is the Library up to?

This book is really fun. I'm noticing a tendency for Cogman to use her many-worlds device to accomplish something a bit more like time travel, taking Irene off to the Prohibition ere in the last book, and now to a romantic, gilded version of Paris where Marius and his revolutionary students cold be gathering round the corner and the Phantom of the Opera lurking in the building opposite. It's deeply atmospheric and enjoyable, but there is more here - a devious, fiendish plot and, for Irene, some real moral dilemmas.

Just what is she prepared to do to advance the aims of the library? As a trained thief, quite a lot - we know that already. But if the library asks too much, what can she do?

The whole situation is enmeshed with Dragon and Fae politics, which Irene needs to understand if she's to save the day, and Cogman only unpicks this slowly, creating a real sense of mystery as well as some heartstopping confrontations and combat. (These generally seem to come as Irene is about to get to sit down and eat - by the end of the book I was just desperate for her to get a square meal inside her).

As well as peril, there's romance too, as Irene tries to advance things with Kai - not easy when they are surrounded by sharp eyed diplomats from all factions - and I won't say how that turns out, you'll have to read the book! And that, really, is all I should say. READ THE BOOK. It is a wonderful confection of delights, a book that will have you sitting up into the small hours, holding your breath at times, guffawing at others and maybe shedding a few tears.

As I said, wonderful fun. Five books in, this series shows no sign of flagging - and I can't wait to see what's coming in the next one.

Previous reviews:

The Masked City
The Burning Page
The Lost Plot

Review - The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman

Cover by Neil Lang

The Lost Plot (Invisible Library, 4)
Genevieve Cogman
Pan, 14 December 2017
PB, 342pp

Many thanks to Pan for an advance copy of this book.

As the fourth instalment of her adventures opens, Irene Winters is in trouble. In quest of a book, she's stumbled into a nest of vampires and is about to have her veins opened.

And it only gets worse from then on...

I think I can safely say that these stories of Irene and her desperate, book-seeking journeys are - alongside anything by Emma Newman or Charles Stross - my favourite ongoing series.

It's something about Irene herself: the kick-ass librarian who drills like a laser through reams of alternate realities pursuing the precious books that will bind the universe together, once gathered in the multidimensional Library. Irene has a dream job and I envy her (despite the inevitable peril).

It's also something about that Library itself, the ultimate book pile, protruding into this street on one Earth, that quad on another, enormous, serene, self-contained, safe. (Or perhaps not so safe - as we saw in the previous three books that it could be menaced and Irene was only able to save it at some personal risk - and cost).

But most of all it's Cogman's writing. The pithy, sharp references, such as how, to befuddle pursuers, Librarians have adopted that pop culture phrase "These are not the [whatever] you're looking" in their ur-Language that can alter realities. The unbridled violence and chaos that follows in Irene's well-meaning wake. The perfectly realised alternate Earths (and other worlds).

Most of all, though, it's the joy that Cogman takes in her creation, like a genial deity who has made a world and seen that it is good.

If that whets your appetite, this book would be an excellent jumping-on point (is that a thing?)  It doesn't require any knowledge of the earlier plot and is basically a standalone adventure for Irene and her dragon apprentice Kai. Drawn into murky dragon politics (rather than the machinations of the Fae) Irene is co-opted by Security to track down a Librarian who may be endangering the hard-preserved neutrality of the Library. She has to face off with mobsters, the police, molls and, worst of all, rogue dragons, in a 1920s New York analogue. There are speakeasies, artefacts and museum stacks together with lashings of mayhem

Taken together, these give the book something of an Indiana Jones crossed with Doctor Who vibe. It's deliriously captivating reading, real cliff-hangery, page turning stuff. Behind this, it is, though, the dragon politics that and their ultimate impact on Irene that I sense are driving this story and setting up future events. Irene is anxious to demonstrate the Library's neutrality, but has to confront the fact that Kai's presence seems to suggest something else. And Irene's personal feelings are engaged as well so that she begins to feel doubly compromised. What is she to do?

Cogman stokes the tension and attraction between Irene and Kai as a counterpoint to the main adventure until you just wish they'd let neutrality go hang and just... well, this is a respectable blog so I'll go no further. Let's just say there are Feelings here and leave it at that.

If you're looking for a present for the (urban) fantasy geek in your life, this may just be the one. And if you find they don't love it, well, perhaps that's telling you something about them.

One final thing. Reading this book I found actual silver glitter on my fingers. I think the magic's rubbing off on me!

Review: The Burning Page by Genevieve Cogman

Image from http://www.grcogman.com/

The Burning Page (Invisible Library 3)

Genevieve Cogman

Pan, 15 December 2016

PB, 358

Source: bought from Waterstones in Cambridge

She had to save the Library. 

Save the books. 

Save herself...

The Burning Page is the third outing for Irene Winters, and these books just keep getting better and better. 

Irene is a Librarian - she is therefore not only a trained assassin and spy but familiar with the mysterious, extradimensional Library whose mission is to collect books from all the alternative worlds in order to keep chaos itself at bay. Posted to an alternate Victorian London where Fae plot and scheme and a Great Detective, Peregrine Vale, practises from 221b Baker Street, Irene is supported by her apprentice, Kai, who just happens to be a dragon. 

As if all this wasn't complicated enough, Irene seems to have attracted the special attention of Alberich, enemy and traitor to the Library. Alberich claims to have the power to destroy the Library. But he wants to make Irene an offer first...

That's a flavour of the book. It's clever writing revolving around a clever, confident heroine who takes no nonsense from anyone. And it's an action-filled, fun romp from start to finish. Irene's prime responsibility is acquiring - if necessary stealing - those necessary books, and here she repeatedly demonstrates a cool head, devising plans on the fly to infiltrate the magically protected library of a parallel St Petersburg or to escape from a secret-police dominated parallel Prussia. That's pretty much as in the previous books.

What's different is Irene having to cope with a spiralling crisis as certainties she relies on - about the Library, as well as herself - begin to unravel. This where, I think, Cogman manages to both to challenge Irene and to deepen her as a character. It would be easy to have Irene fall to pieces and spend half the book on introspection before she rallied at the end. Rather than that, Cogman has a clever way of Irene articulating her problems - to herself and, in part to others - and reasoning through them so that can see how close to the edge she is but also how she is adapting and trying to keep a step or two ahead of Alberich.

Along the way Irene has some new problems to deal with in the shape of Library internal politics - as Bradamant appears again, always a worrying sign - and work with both Kai and Vale, both of whom she rather fancies, proves complicated. But she's never stumped.

Cogman's writing is, as always, a joy, whether it's Alberich duelling verbally with Irene during a dance:

"The Palace is guarded... I don't just mean by casual guards, either. I mean by alert guards... guards ready to shoot and kill and have the necromancers ask questions later"

or Irene herself coolly reviewing her options in a den of werewolves or skilfully managing those pesky men who WILL keep assuming they know best (despite NOT being qualified Librarians). 

I really enjoyed this book, which surpasses the high standard set by its forerunners. I hope that Cogman writes more, though I sense there may be a natural pause after this (if I'm wrong about that I'll be delighted).

Review: The Masked City by Genevieve Cogman

The Masked City

Genevieve Cogman
Pan, 3 December 2015
PB, 368 pp

I'm grateful to the publisher for an advance copy of this through Netgalley.

This is the sequel to The Invisible Library (Amazon review here: I don't seem to have blogged this one) and is in my view as good or better than the earlier book.

Irene works for a mysterious, extradimensional Library which exists across multiple worlds. Is mission is to collect books and it isn't too fastidious about the means employed. Basically Irene and her colleagues are Library secret agents, equally at home demurely taking tea with the Ambassador and climbing over rooftops committing burglary.

In The Masked City, Irene's little establishment in a Victorian London (but with werewolves! And Fae!) suffers a reverse. With lots of promises form her bosses and the dragons, she's still left pretty much on her own, undertaking a perilous journey to put things right. Failure will mean was between the Fae and the Dragons; failure will mean Irene takes the blame.

Both Dragons and Fae are tricky customers: the former domineering and tyrannical, the latter prone to feeding on humans by drawing them into and an ever more megalomaniacal life narrative. Dragons thrive on Order, Fae on Chaos. The Library seeks to maintain a balance.

What follows is pretty much non stop action featuring an enchanted Venice, a supernatural Train, alternate dimensions, sinister cloaked figures in the mist, an impossibly handsome Dragon and a great deal more. Throughout it all Irene is intrepid, resourceful and independent. Nobody comes to her rescue (well I think it might have happened once) and the fate of that handsome Dragon depends on her. It's a kind of compelling nonsense (not a criticism, I LIKE nonsense) as beguiling as a Fae Lord and impossible to pigeonhole (PhDs could be written on whether this is Fantasy, Urband Fantasy or what. Who cares.)

One of my (slight) criticisms of the previous book was that in places the language could do with a bit more polish. That couldn't be said of Masked City and indeed Cogman has some witty turns of phrase ("Do I itch, and would they scratch?" "She, Vale and Kai were untidy blotches on its expensive elegance. Blotches with coffee, though, which helped.")

Mostly though it is, like Invisible Library, a great, occasionally funny, occasionally scary, romp. And Irene is a terrific hero. More of this please Ms Cogman.