My experience of The Library of the Unwritten was one of disappointment. However, there’s no such thing as an unbiased review, and I struggled through this book during the worst possible time for me to be reading a book with complicated angst. So even though I wasn’t crazy about this book and will explain why, I think some of you might enjoy it anyway.

This book, which is one of several “library” themed fantasies out recently, involves Claire, the librarian in Hell. Her job is to care for and protect books, especially the unwritten ones, and sometimes return characters to their pages:

There were two parts to any unwritten book. Its words – the twisting, changing text on the page – and its story. Most of the time the two parts were united in the books filling the Unwritten Wing’s stacks, but now and then a book woke up. Felt it had a purpose beyond words on a page. Then the story made itself into one of its characters and went walking.

As the head librarian of Hell’s Unwritten Wing, it was Claire’s job to keep stories on their pages.

Once an author dies, sometimes Claire lets characters hang out in the library, but as long as the author is alive Claire considers it to be too dangerous to let the characters roam free so she returns characters to their books by persuasion or by force. The first thing we see Claire do is force a character back into a horror novel, despite this character’s pleas, by stabbing it (damaged characters return to their books automatically). Because of this action, I never saw Claire as a hero, and I very quickly formed assumptions about what the book would be about. One of my big triggers is when a person decides that another person who acts like a person with all the feelings and desires of a person isn’t “real.” It sends me absolutely through the roof. So I formed an instant deep dislike of Claire that never went away and I was super bummed, to use a technical term, that she was the hero of the book.

Incidentally, Claire refers to “bodice rippers” disparagingly at one point. This did not offend me because it was exactly the kind of thing Claire would say. She’s a rigid, judgemental snob, after all. Alas, it only contributed to my apathy about Claire. Claire does experience growth and eventually acknowledges that a character released from a book can become a person but alas it was too little, too late for this grumpy reader.

Back to the plot. Claire, a teenaged demon named Leto, and Claire’s cheerful assistant, Brevity, head to Seattle to chase down an escaped Hero. They find the character (who they just call ‘Hero’) but before returning him to his book they have to go on another hunt, this time for a scrap of paper from the Devil’s Bible. This drags them into a huge, angsty, heart-searching soul-rending quest involving religious politics between Heaven and Hell.

I’m a simple woman, and I rather enjoyed the straightforward but fun section in Seattle before all the Heaven and Hell stuff came into play. As much as I dislike Claire, the other characters are endearing, and the atmosphere of Seattle was rendered with accuracy and humor. I also enjoyed an interlude in Valhalla, what with duelling and the ravens and the mead and all. It was nice when these characters got to just sit around and chit chat. There’s a character called Walter whom I adored but won’t spoil – he’s a gatekeeper with many surprises.

However, while the start of the book suggested a light-hearted meta-romp with a focus on Brevity and Leto, the actuality was a complicated and angsty book about Claire and religious drama (in the sense of mythology). You have to review the book you get, not the book you expect to get, but I honestly did not care for the book I got. I was not invested in the plot or in Claire, the stakes seemed much too artificial to give a rip about, and I kept getting confused. I also found that while the book does wrap up (it’s not a cliffhanger) there’s not much payoff (due to it being the first in a series).

However, as I’ll explain below, I was biased by the fact that at the time I had an attention span of approximately 30 seconds and enough angst of my own to power a CW show. This book wasn’t a good fit for me, but for those who like epic fantasy with morally ambiguous characters, the book would probably qualify as a good read (and a short one by epic fantasy standards). This is the first book in a series, and I assume that the mythology will become even more fraught as the series progresses. It’s a series about reading and writing, which is always fun, and people who like complicated politics involving vast powers will find plenty here that will keep them engaged. There’s a whiff of romance between Hero and Claire, and Claire points out that he has all the makings of “a grimdark darling.”

In short – this book did nothing for me, but it is skillfully enough written and could do a great deal for the right reader. Thus ends this conflicted review.

However, I know we have many animal lovers in our midst, so if you would like to read about why my attention span was not great, read on.

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My first great distraction was that of a week old kitten who was found in a school hallway and picked up by people who did not know what to do with it. A friend of mine and I took on this kitten. She bottle fed it every two hours all day and I did the same every night. Did you know that after you bottle feed a kitten you have to rub its genitalia with a washcloth to make it pee and poop? Now you do! As of this writing, Ulysses is a Big Kitten who crawls, has figured out the litter box and independent peeing (YAY OMG) and is starting to have cat food mixed with formula through a bottle but still doesn’t understand that he can eat the same thing from a plate. He can go longer without eating so I only have to feed him once in the night, at about 3 or 4AM. Still, I’m kinda tired.

Happily, I arranged for a day and a night of kitten respite care so I could take a nap and pull my frazzled self together when lo and behold I was driving my daughter to one of her many things and came across a pigeon that was clearly tame and lost. A neighbor helped me catch it and sort of thrust it at me saying, “So, you wanna take it somewhere?”

Fun fact – this is the second time that someone has handed me an injured pigeon with just these words. What about me screams, “Hey, hand me a pigeon?” Why does this keep happening? Anyway, here’s Stevie. He, or possibly she, is a Rock Pigeon, but is just like a white-winged dove. See what I did there?

Stevie is going to a forever home in a week – unlike my house, it’s a home with another pigeon (they are social so he’ll be happier with a friend) and no cats. Ulysses (the kitten) is going to a forever home when he’s fully weaned and a little bigger. His new owner is (or technically will be) a little boy who adores him. When they met, Ulysses peed all over kid, who beamed and declared, “I will name him Little Angel!”

Anyway, you can see why I should only be reviewing old collections of comic strips, not complicated angsty novels. I conclude with a more recent pic of Ulysses, my co-reviewer, much more grown than when we first met.