Currently Reading - 25-10-18

 

The Burning Page, Genevieve Coglan

First new book in several weeks as wi-fi has been on the blink so the Kindle hasn't been able to connect (wired-fi is fine, even from the same router) - I finally gave up trying to diagnose the problem and dug my old one out of storage to act as a wi-fi hub.

This is Book 3 of the Invisible Library, and I initially had problems remembering what had happened in Book 2, which several characters are suffering from the after-effects of, but it came back to me. Anyway, in a multiverse of parallel Earths, there is a cold(-ish) war between Order and Chaos, represented by the Dragons and the Fae respectively. Chaos grants the Fae magical powers, while the Dragons have some order-based powers. Individual worlds lie on a spectrum between order and chaos. Theoretically neutral in this conflict is the Invisible Library, which exists to preserve unique variants of books, which its agents acquire by any means necessary, helped by the Language, which can temporarily re-write reality. The Library in turn has its own bete-noire, Alberich, a librarian who went over to the dark side centuries ago.

Irene Winters is Librarian-in-Residence on a steampunkish world, and currently on probation in the aftermath of Book 2, when she disobeyed orders in order to rescue her apprentice Kai, who is a dragon prince, from a high chaos world, helped by Peregrine Vale, the Great Detective of her world's London. (Irene's name is no coincidence). She is also one of few Librarians to have taken on Alberich and lived. Her major problem at the start (apart from the crappy assignments she keeps getting given the probation) is that chaos disagreed with Vale, who is indulging in his morphine habit as a result. To further complicate things, she has picked up a Fae refugee, Zayanna, also as a result of her adventures in book 2.

Then things escalate. Irene and Kai return from a messy retrieval to find that someone has filled her house with poisonous giant spiders. That is dealt with easily enough, but Alberich is somehow interfering with the gates (usually doorways in libraries) that link different worlds to the world that is the Invisible Library, in some cases fatally. Summoned to a council of Librarians, Irene is assigned a high-risk retrieval (on the grounds the Library's power is based on books and they can't have too many rare books). On her return to London to pick up Kai, Irene finds herself kidnapped by werewolves, but she is a trained Librarian (she tends to say this a lot), and rises to the occasion. With Kai retrieved, and Vale temporarily interested in a case, they set out on her assignment,.

This takes them to a chaos-aspected world with a Russian dominated European empire, under the rule of the immortal Catherine the Great, and unfortunately the book is located in the Winter Palace. After an unfortunate incident with flying sleigh-port security (it turns out magical contraband sniffing bears really, really like dragons, even in human form), and busting out of the secret police HQ, Irene and Kai slip into a reception at the palace, which after various alarums and excursions leads to a confrontation with Alberich in the middle of the dance floor. Alberich it seems, is interested in one of Irene's retrievals, a copy of Grimm with an extra story that may reveal what the Library did with Alberich's child after expelling him, and which Irene read. With Alberich cast into the outer darkness by the full force of Russian state wizardry, it's back to the secret police cell for Irene and Kai, which doesn't really hold them any longer than the last time.

Irene makes an executive decision to call time on her mission, because 1) Alberich and 2) someone knew where she was going, but not what her precise mission was, which pretty much limits it to her circle of friends. And it doesn't help that there's another trap waiting for them on their return. Unfortunately I thought the story went off the rails here,

( because spoilers )

 

And it all culminates in a fight in a phantasmagorical library between two masters of the Language.

Despite the major plot issues, I really enjoyed this and read it in a single sitting. Irene is a sympathetic hero ,even if her male followers can be annoying at times.

Other Reading:

I'm still busy delving into the depths of Friedman's Naval AA, extracting info for use in my ongoing naval wargaming project, so no new non-fiction. WRT fiction I seem  to have accidentally started re-reads of Cherryh's Merchanters Luck, and Faery in Shadow, and Fortress in the Eye of Time. Yes, all of them. I may be lacking focus right now.

Gaming:

My XCOM2 campaign has run into my normal problem of combining so many mods I eventually hit a compatibility problem. At some point I may knuckle down into figuring out which one it is. In the meantime, given someone mentioned in a Youtube video that the release of Ark's new DLC 'Extinction' is imminent, whereas I'd thought it wasn't due until the end of November, I decided to at least make a start on the earlier DLCs that I bought at the same time as the main game. So I now have campaigns going on not just The Island, but also on Scorched Earth (Ark in the Desert), Aberration (Ark in the dungeon - actually the innards of a wrecked space-station) and Ragnarok (acknowledged as the best Ark map, originally developed by a couple of guys in the community and bought in by Wildcard, which is basically Ark with everything from the other DLCs). The Island remains my main campaign, and I'm running much more compact campaigns on the other Arks, but I'm progressing much faster with those given I actually know what I'm doing now. And hopefully I'll have more of a clue about what's going on in Extinction when it releases.