Libriomancer, by Jim C. Hines

[rowyn]

This morning, I looked through my remaining stack of unread library books, which consisted of:

* Three Aubrey/Maturin novels (I checked out the second volume of the 6-volume set, which compiles the fourth through seventh novels. I've only read #4 from it so far).
* Rue and Rosemary, by Seanan McGuire
* Two novels by Brandon Sanderson
* Unspoken, by Sarah Rees Brennan
* Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines

My intention was "forget the order that they're due back, I just want one I'm sure will not depress the hell out of me." After Feed, I wanted something upbeat.

I stared at them for a bit. I didn't expect any of them to have the grimness of Feed, but any of them struck me as having the potential for a bittersweet ending. I was tempted to get the one unread Pratchett novel I've been saving for a special occasion, but selected Libriomancer instead.

Libriomancer is a rare case where I actually liked the book better as it neared the climax and through the denouement.

The story is set in a version of modern America; magic exists, but it's kept quiet by a global conspiracy of magicians. "Libriomancy" is the ability to reach into books and pull things out of them. The narrator is one of the libriomancers; they're very rare. All magicians are very rare, and nearly all belong to the smallish (it's like 400 people worldwide) global conspiracy.

The author takes some pains to nerf libriomancy, because it's basically as insanely powerful as you'd think it would be. Even with the nerfing, it is probably best not to spend too much time trying to figure out how you would better accomplish whatever the narrator is trying to do. And some key points do come across as hand-wavey or not in keeping with things already established by the narrative.

However, especially during the climax, I found myself several times laughing with delight at clever things the protagonist attempted and pulled off, and which did feel in keeping with the established narrative.

As one might expect, there are many references to both classic and contemporary literature; I quite enjoyed this aspect of the story. Although I screamed aloud when the protagonist pulled out a copy of Feed. "NOOOO DO NOT UNLEASH THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE ON YOUR WORLD" (Spoiler: he doesn't.)

One of the reasons that I liked the book better as I read on is that the characters took the time to examine the things that were nagging at me; for example, it is not just blandly assumed that the mundanes are "better off" not knowing about magic. And the villain is completely terrifying, but kind of has a point once you see the whole picture.

The protagonist is endearingly geeky; the kind of person who tries to work out all the implications of magical or science fiction devices. At one point, he fires a white beam from a conjured microwave gun, and reacts with 'White light? From microwaves? That doesn't even make sense'. My favorite quote is probably this thought bubble, after he succeeds at a dangerous experiment: This is awesome I'm talking to someone through a book oh shit he's going to kill me how the hell do I get out of here?

It is also the only book outside of Austen that has a love triangle I don't hate. I realized this about two-thirds of the way through the novel: "Wow, this love triangle does not bother me at all." Which never happens. Mostly I liked this one because the people involved act like adults and not small children in a state of constant jealousy-fueled tension. I think I will do a separate rant just about this, because I want to do a spoiler-ful version.

I was thinking 7 or 8 during the first half of the book, but I am going to give it a 9 of 10 because by the end I can think of way more things that I liked than that I didn't.

Comments

[terrycloth.livejournal.com]

The 'secret magic in the modern world' setting isn't one of my favorites... it's not a dealbreaker though and there've been some good books with it. Maybe I should check this one out...

[rowyn]

Yes, I was thinking around the halfway point "you know, I kind of hate the 'secret magic in modern world' trope. But by the end of the book I felt like the protagonist was on pretty much the same page with me on the topic of "why this sucks", and that helped. n_n

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Awwwww. I kind of like the "secret magic in modern world" trope, at least in theory ... but I like it even BETTER if it's "secret magic in the Wild West" or "secret magic in the 1920s" or "secret magic in the megacorporate-dystopian future" or "secret magic in the (insert aesthetically-interesting place and time period here)." Double the escapism. =D

Nerfing Libriomancy: I'm curious as to what sort of "nerfing" is employed, because, yeah, this sounds like something that's insanely powerful -- the sort of thing that so often is more limited by a failure of imagination (or, in this case ... a failure of publication?) than anything else. I'm supposing there must be some sort of rule where you can't just write up your own book with anything you please in it and then dive into it to pull out anything you want? Because then we're talking about something on par with godhood, but just with a minor inconvenience of having to write about it first before anything cool happens.

Really, I guess as soon as you have any sort of magic that boils down to getting something for nothing, you've opened the opportunity for things to spiral into craziness if you think about it too much -- but when we get to genies-and-wishes levels of crazy magic, for some reason I just have a great deal of trouble with getting too attached to the setting anymore.


Lamp-shading the Microwave Gun: I'm of a divided mind about lamp-shading "this makes no sense!" within a story. That's actually something that bugged me quite a bit about (what few excerpts I read from) World War Z. Stuff happens that makes no sense, such as someone observing zombies walking around on the ocean floor at depths comparable to the depth of the sunken Titanic, and their brains aren't being turned into mush by the sheer ocean pressures (and it can't be because zombie brains are nigh-indestructible, or there would be no point in "aim for the head!"). Introducing something that makes no sense and then having a character in the story comment, "This makes no sense!" doesn't endear me to much of anything. I'd like to imagine that, at least to the author, it makes some sort of sense, if this is supposed to be an even remotely serious story.



Anyway, the concept sounds interesting. Myst was entertaining as well, even though the whole book-magic stuff didn't seem to make much sense, so maybe I'm just thinking about it too much. ;)

[rowyn]

Re: lampshading -- I wouldn't call that "lampshading". The point was that the character had pulled the gun out of a book. That book described the gun as (a) having a microwave beam and (b) firing white light. So it works for the protagonist in Libriomancer the same way as it did in the book he got it from, even though by physics it made no sense. The author is pointing out which rules the gun follows (those of the book it created) by noting which ones it doesn't (those of normal physics).

Re: nerfing.
* Libriomancy is a product of mass belief: it arises when at least a few hundred people have read the same book in the same form. So it only works with mass-printed books (because the books have to be the same form, so hand-written books or unique editions don't work).
* You generally can't get sapient beings out of books -- the characters are not complex enough and end up insane in the real world. There are a few exceptions (Lena came from a book as an acorn that grew in the real world, for example, so she was not originally a character in her book.
* You can only extract things from books if they'll fit through the pages of the book.
* Books can be 'locked' so that nothing can be extracted from them. If one copy of a book is locked, all copies are. The head of the global conspiracy locks books with especially dangerous contents (eg, the Time-Turner from Harry Potter, or the zombie virus from Feed).

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Libriomancy is a product of mass belief: That still leaves open the chance of deliberately engineering things. Put something amazing in a children's book, flood the market with it, etc. But then, as if there isn't enough mind-boggling stuff out there already to work with, so that's probably overkill.

(This reminds me a little bit of one of the spin-off titles from the "Fables" series, where the reality of the fable characters is heavily impacted by popular culture ... so the trouble-making trickster "Jack" character -- Jack of the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, Everyman Jack, etc., all rolled into one -- acquires great wealth, goes to Hollywood and has a scheme to increase his own power by bankrolling a series of movies that feature "Jack" as a fairy-tale action hero. Although, come to think of it, the story does seem to be rather VAGUE about what real impact this has on things, other than that popular Fables are implied to be much harder to kill.)


You generally can't get sapient beings out of books: Heh. The idea of characters from books going insane in the "real world" makes perfect sense to me. I can think of so many protagonist-heroes whose entire existence probably depends upon a cooperative world; the amazing coincidences that the hero and only the hero can exploit in his own perfect little universe would fail to emerge in the Real World, and the poor hero's worldview might be shattered as a result. Or, certain things just NEVER HAPPEN in the hero's world, so he has no way of dealing with them. (How cruel it would be to drag a happy naive character from a children's happy storybook into a world where /things can go terribly wrong/! Aieee!)

I guess that sort of "fish out of water" thing has been done before (somewhat lamely with "Last Action Hero" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, and rather creepily and depressingly in Woody Allen's "Purple Rose of Cairo"), but it still interests me.


You can only extract things from books if they'll fit through the pages of the book: All right. Now I'm suddenly wondering where in the world one can find one of those novelty book displays where the book is HUMONGOUS AND OVERSIZED (some sort of prop for a museum, perhaps?). I'm also thinking back to my own childhood and assorted "Jumbo Book of ____" oversized books (though not oversized enough to pull something awesome like a FLYING CAR through, sadly).

Don't open Moby Dick! You'll cause a GREAT DELUGE as the water comes spilling through! D=

[rowyn]

Oh, and my problem with 'secret magic' is that it makes me feel sorry for the mundanes and/or resentful of the magic-users , if the magic is cool and potent. Secret magic that kind of sucks (like in the Demon books) I have less trouble with.

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. Good point. Poor, pathetic MUGGLES! (Hey, wait a minute! I'm a Muggle, aren't I? Ack!) ;)

I'm more fond of the "magic that exists in the shadows and frayed edges of the universe, and the more you know about it, the less sane you're apt to be when all is said and done with." More mysterious and Lovecraftian, I guess. I have an easier time accepting magic and the supernatural in some familiar time-period setting (modern, wild west, etc.) if there's a good reason for it to be hidden and secret -- because otherwise, surely history would have been altered drastically to be unrecognizable by the utility of such powers!

(And somehow magic doesn't seem so cool if, you know, EVERYBODY knows all about it. ;) It's one of the reasons why standard D&D loses a bit of its luster for me; mages and magical creatures are a dime-a-dozen!)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

That sounds pretty good! I'll have to snag it when it's out in paperback. (it may be already, I am not sure)

[rowyn]

It'll probably be a little while before the paperback edition -- hardcover just came out in August. Although I note that the hardcover is only $14.33 on Amazon, which is, what, $5-$6 more than the typical mainstream publisher paperback these days? Huh.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

This is true, but that's also 79% more expensive than they are... Plus taking up space. Miserkitty is miserly!

[kelloggs2066.livejournal.com]

Oddly, I read "Libriomancer" as "Limbergermancer".

Now, I'm imagining a Mouse Wizard.