Book Review: The Librarian’s Ruse by Thirzah
Today’s review is in honor of yesterday’s book release–A Traitor’s Vow, which is the sequel to The Librarian’s Ruse. For the sake of context, I began with this book and am sharing this review for others like me who might be unfamiliar with this series as a whole.
(Required disclaimer that though I received a free copy to review, the following opinions are my own.)
What is The Librarian’s Ruse about?
ONE MISTAKE. TWO EMPIRES. COUNTLESS SECRETS.
Amelia’s peaceful life as a librarian is cut short when she and her older brother Leon are sent on an errand to Eldnaire, the capital city of the vicious Vilnarian Empire. After witnessing a crime carried out in the woods, Amelia and Leon enter the capital only to be faced with an impossible tell the truth and risk imprisonment, or lie and face far worse if they’re caught.
One deception leads to a dozen more, and before she can put an end to the lies, she and Leon are swept up into Vilnaria’s high society. Amelia finds an unlikely ally in Vilnaria’s handsome new ruler, Emperor Kyvir. But as the secrets and scandals continue to pile up and danger closes in on all sides, Amelia must decide once and for all what matters the truth…or her life?
Let’s start with the characters, as they were the driving force of this book. Unfortunately… I didn’t really like them. I didn’t believe the dramatic difference of morals between Leon and Amelia as siblings–particularly given their homeschooled upbringing; Leon is intentionally insufferable (so points for effect, I suppose); and Amelia is too passive to be a likeable main character. Kyvir was likeable enough, but not fleshed out sufficiently to be as engaging as he could have been. The side characters were charicatures, either vague and uninteresting (as in Fern’s case) or mismatched in their motivations and the way their actions came across (as in Gladik’s case). All of the characters had potential, but were either pushed too far or not far enough to be effective in their portrayal.
The dialogue was so-so, owing to weak characterization and too many modern speech mannerisms to be believable. Thirzah is a good writer, as I’ll discuss shortly, so it’s clear that the dialogue would have been a strong point had the characters been stronger and had her editor addressed the dialogue’s overly modern sound.
The plot was well-paced, but its conclusion fell flat for me. There were too few meaningful consequences–especially for Leon–and the end of Gladik’s plot arc was unfair. Besides which, a new character is introduced at the climax to fix everything in deus ex machina fashion. Overall, the plot is well-done for most of the book–if a bit contrived due mostly to the character weaknesses discussed above–but the ending was largely dissatisfying and thematically weak.
I found the worldbuilding vivid in the details but wobbly on its foundations. There are three nations(?) involved in the story, and their relationships are vaguely sketched out but left me with a lot of questions. Namely, how do librarians and libraries work in this world? It’s the characters’ vocation, yet I’m confused as to what they were actually traveling to accomplish and how it was supposed to work. I also had trouble keeping Vilnaria and Ivanyar straight due to the similarities in their names. I would have liked to see more clarity in the foundational elements of the international politics that are at the heart of this book. That said, I was intrigued by some of the details, such as mercenary pins and how one of the nations might have learned to optimize the profit of war after becoming so accustomed to it; these are the sorts of details that hint at something more and grab me as a reader, regardless of whether there’s anything behind them or not. I would have liked for the foundations to have been solid enough that the world had been less distracting and these details could have been a bigger highlight by themselves.
The actual writing of this book is good. Thirzah does a good job at using unique, vivid metaphors in her description and balancing description well with action and dialogue. This contributes, I think, to the quality of pacing, and those two things–the writing and the pacing, with those fun worldbuilding details thrown in as a bonus–were what bumped this up to a three star read for me. This book was easy to read, novel-length but not long, well-written, paced for a light read, and every bit of it had potential even if it wasn’t realized here. I really look forward to seeing that potential grow and be built upon in Thirzah’s future work as she grows in experience and the storytelling craft.
Rating: 3 stars
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