The Burning Page
By Genevieve Cogman.
Some prefatory waffle.
It’s six years since I read the first two books in the series, although the characters and the settings weren’t utterly unfamiliar, and my reviews of the first two books helped. A quick recap of sorts.
Irene works for the Library. She jumps from one alternative world to another, nicking unique books such as sequels that were never written on ours or alt. versions of books which she then deposits in the Library. She’s accompanied by her assistant, Kai, and most missions run about as smoothly as rough sandpaper over a baby’s bottom.
In this universe there are the fae, who are contrary, self-regarding creatures and dragons (Kai), who are at the other end of the spectrum. The worlds which Irene and Kai visit can fall somewhere between these two points, with the environment being potentially dangerous to any human as the detective Peregrine Vale discovered from his adventure with his two friends in their previous outing. The main villain, Alberich, is a former librarian who let himself be infected by chaos. He has a particular interest in Irene because of the contents of a book she read (no, I can’t recall the details).
And now, the main feature.
Irene has been off stealing another book when Alberich generates a message on the front page of a newspaper informing her that he’s going to destroy the Library. When she and Kai tried to return home, the gate blew up in flames and they had to find an alternative route back to their world. When they do re-enter the Library, there’s a message to say that there’s a meeting for all the librarians about the situation.
As well as this little crisis, someone is trying to kill Irene, and Peregrine Vale is suffering from the effects of visiting a high-chaos world. The options are for him to go to a high-order world or to go to a high-chaos world and become a fae. And yes, everyone’s favourite hot, sexy fae - What?! Lord Silver? - Zayanna is back.
As it turns out, Zayanna is one of Alberich’s minions, but after Irene saves her from being killed for spilling the beans about Alberich, she helps her get to the mad world which he’s using to infect the entire network of alt. worlds and thus the Library itself.
Irene gets into a massive fight with Alberich and eventually orders all the books in his parody of the Library to burn. Kai and Vale turn up to ferry her to safety, and Alberich has presumably sunk with his chaotic bibliothèque
I have to say something about the use of English. Partly it’s Cogman’s excessive use of the phrase “alternat[iv]e world(s)” (my emendation) and partly it’s the use of the verb alternate as an adjective even though our author does use the word “alternative” correctly (although mostly as a noun rather than an adjective, I suspect). She can call them “alt. world(s)” or “other world(s)” or “parallel world(s)”.
The story generally rattles along at a breathless pace. Irene and Kai only have to take a couple of steps into a new world before everything goes Murphy’s Law. But at times things dragged a little with scenes that passed their sell-by date by a considerable margin.
I must admit that I was less convinced during the fight between Alberich (who’s supposed to be a boss monster) and Irene who somehow has no major issues finding some loophole to thwart him.
There are quite a lot of working-things-out asides which can, I think, be a clunky means of conveying information. They always leave me wondering whether the reader should be able to work this out for themselves or whether Irene is trop clever pour toi.
The B story, which was Vale’s problem after their previous adventure, was solved without any real drama. He’s unable to enter the Library because he’s infected with chaos. Irene has already talked about using the Language to rid it from his system, but had her doubts about the effect it might have. She does exactly that and he’s cured.
Overall, though, this seems to be a decent addition to the series. As I said above, it doesn’t get too bogged down, and at least when Irene and Kai are off on a job, Cogman is all for non-stop action. However, the first question is whether Alberich really is dead, and the second is whether his mysterious son will suddenly be revealed and want unmotivated revenge on Irene for the death of the father he never knew. To part four, darlings.