Tuesday 28 June 2016

Review - The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

Full disclosure: I almost didn't finish this one.

There's a very intense scene involving dogs, a lion and a half-zombie dude that made me go "hmmmm .... maybe not" but then I couldn't stop thinking about it, so I put on my weird book diving gear and fell off the side of the boat. (That's a terrible metaphor.)

The Library at Mount Char is. It's weird. There's no getting around that one. It's a weird book. Good weird, mostly though also there are parts that I would categorise as awful weird as well.

Father - the ..... head librarian? is missing, and none of his charges know where he's gone, or what's happened to him. Also, they can't get back into the library, and things are Bad.

Carolyn - who's catalogue is languages - has a plan. But she either needs the other librarians to work with her, or she needs to get them out of her way ...

In a way, The Library at Mount Char feels like a book that has ideas that are bigger than the story it's telling. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but there are a LOT of ideas in this book.

It's about the apocalypse in a way, but also not. It's about Carolyn coming to terms with her fate in a way, but also not, and it's about Steve the half-zombie in a way as well.

It's really hard to categorise, and I kind of dig that about it but at the same time, it's probably the most unsettling book I've read since Silence of the Lambs. In a different way, but still. Unsettling.


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