2013 Book Review #12: Libriomancer

[jethrien]

Title: Libriomancer
Author: Jim Hines
Genre: Urban fantasy
Thingummies: 4.5

Synopsis: A Michigan-based wizard whose magic works by pulling objects out of books has to deal with a fellow wizard gone rogue, a bunch of really angry vampires, an amorous dryad, and a kidnapped Johann Gutenberg.

Thoughts: This reminded me very much of Jim Butcher, in the best of all possible ways. The mystery is generally well constructed, the protagonist is sympathetic but a little snarky, and the world-building is first rate. I love the fundamental concept--libriomancers essentially can stick their hand into any book they've ever read and pull out objects from the text to use in the real world, as long as it can fit through the pages. Also, if you manage to pull out people, they tend to go nuts. So we get healing potions from Narnia and monofilament wire from Gibson and fairy dust from Peter Pan. There are dozens of species of vampires, infected by everything from classic Stoker to Rice to Meyer, with the varying abilities/weaknesses of each. Hines' taste leans towards S/SF, but there are plenty of references to literature and history books as well. It's a book lover's dream, a love song to the power of the written word, and Hines' sheer exuburance at the joy of fiction just leaps off the page.

I'll also give him credit for pulling off a relatively tricky balancing act regarding the love interest. Hines is well known in the SF community for being a strong proponent of feminism. Here, he engages in a potentially dangerous thought experiment--if you have a woman who is explicitly written to be subservient to lovers, is it possible for her to give consent? She can't help but say yes; at the same time, she's a perfectly rational and strong person and when she insists that she wants someting, refusing to believe her also treats her as unable to know her own mind. I'm not going to spoil how he resolves this, but I actually do buy his resolution and respect the fact that he writes it in a way so that she solves her own problem rather than having the protagonist solve it for her. Meanwhile, the protagonist, while not perfect, does a good job of being a decent human being in a difficult circumstance.

Anyway, my one complaint is that while the majority of this mystery plays out very well, there is one critical section in which I feel like he suddenly handwaves. Not to get too spoilery, but I feel like the protagonist manages to make a mental leap from a book passage where I don't think he has enough info to do so, and then the dryad manages to make a similarly unrealistic jump to conclusions from a conversation where I don't think she has enough info, either. Both before and after this section, everything flows logically. And I feel like with another three or four pages of conversation, he could have made this work. But right now, it feels like a cheat, which is especially disappointing given the otherwise strong narrative.

This very much sets up for a series, which I'll be happy to read further installments of.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

So it's basically this?

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

It's nowhere near that bad. The info's mostly there, but it just seems to me that they understand the ramifications way too easily. I think this worked in the outline, but he underwrote the scenes a little bit and it doesn't quite work.

[chanaleh.livejournal.com]

I am mostly amused because someone just ordered a custom button from me at arisia that read, "PRACTICE LIBRIOMANCY". She told me the source but I didn't write it down. Thanks!

[lithoglyphic.livejournal.com]

Being in the mitten, I'm curious about the "Michigan-based"...? It must be notably so, or you wouldn't have mentioned it...

[jethrien.livejournal.com]

Upper Peninsula. Protagonist lives in a very small town in the middle of nowhere. Although there's a trip down from the hinterlands eventually to a university who's name is escaping me at the moment because I've only had three hours of sleep. It's mostly important because the setting is "contemporary" but not "urban".