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Science Fiction Fantasy Blog

Our discussion of Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines

We had a lively discussion on the various magical and character elements in the book and a few of us are looking forward to finishing the series.

A Sampling of Comments:

  • The central relationship between Isaac and Lena, the dryad, was troubling for several of us - the character of Lena needs to break out of the confines of how her character was written.
  • The three-way relationship at the end of the story was not a solution. It’s too bad that Isaac and Dr. Shah didn’t try to help Lena change her story.
  • We really enjoyed the fire spider, Smudge. He was possibly the best thing about the book.
  • The drive over the Mackinac Bridge in Michigan is just as scary as the book says – especially on a motorcycle.
  • The beginning scene when the vampires attack was filled with Isaac’s snarky comments and was too reminiscent of Jim Butcher’s Dresden character where he is always getting himself into trouble with his comments.
  • Heroes need a duster to be legit, like Van Helsing. Isaac’s duster filled with books would have been incredibly heavy.
  • The automatons were interesting and it was creepy that Gutenberg had trapped his enemies inside and made them his guardians.
  • The limits on magic were helpful, such as that you couldn’t pull the Starship Enterprise out of a book and that certain dangerous books were locked.
  • There are different species of vampires roaming the world because authors kept giving vampires more powers - most vampires are no longer limited by sunlight or wooden stakes.
  • The references to books were great (because we knew most of them) and the items that were retrieved, like the shrinking potion from Alice in Wonderland, were good choices. The list of books referenced in the back of the book (actual and made-up titles) was a nice touch.
  • There are so many books about books and booklove out there, but this title was not as cliché as some of the others because of the magic elements.

Please add any additional thoughts or comments you may have about Libriomancers. We gave this title the codes ETH, LIBN, MONS, CTY & MAG with an average rating of 3.5.

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