The Invisible Library

Parallel universes, clever women, a strange pupil, a famous detective and lots of old books - this novel has everything a bibliophile reader could wish for!

Nach den Büchern von Jasper Fforde und Ben Aaranovich war ich auch auf der Suche nach neuer spanender Fantasy-Lektüre und habe sie in Cogmans Debütroman gefunden. Jeder, der gerne mal etwas über geheimnisvollen Assistenten, einer Bibliothek jenseits von Zeit und Raum und einer Protagonistin, die für Bücher alles tut, lesen will, ist hier an der richtigen Stelle.

Join Irene – a professional spy – on her mission to retrieve a special copy of Grimms' Fairy Tales for the Invisible Library, involving handsome assistants, great detectives, cyborg alligators and an annoying coworkers. A diverting dive into alternate universes!

"The Invisible Library" is the first book in a fantasy/crime series by Genevieve Cogman. Like every other librarian, Irene loves books. She collects them, reads them, is passionate about them. Unlike most other librarians, Irene has to travel to alternate worlds to collect them, which can be quite eventful and at times even pretty dangerous. In this installment we follow Irene to an alternate world to obtain a unique copy of the Brothers Grimm's fairytales. Unfortunately she and her apprentice aren't the only ones who are looking for said book and the situation escalates fast. In order to defeat vampires, rogue librarians and faes, Irene and Kai have to liase with a local detective. Can he be trusted, though? Unsurprisingly, the importance of books is what intrigued me about this novel and made me read it. Although it has a good plot and an interesting setting, "The Invisible Library" didn't captivate me as much as I hoped it would.