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The Library Of Shadows (2007)

by Mikkel Birkegaard(Favorite Author)

3.38 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0552775029 (ISBN13: 9780552775021)

languge

English

genre

Mystery & Thriller

publisher

Transworld Publishers

review 1: I spent the entire time trying to figure out if I liked this book or not. There was definitely something lost in the translation, which made the prose seem a little too basic. The world that the author creates is a great one, and geared toward literature nerds, but the plot jumped and paused in strange moments so that when the final scene came I was taken aback at the scale at which the protagonists win. In terms of world building, I would give this an A, but story structure and language land around a C.
review 2: An excellent central premiss involving the superhuman ability to influence people though reading. Two factions of 'Lectors' - the Transmitters and Receivers - have lived undetected for thousands of years until a baddie and his secret society rears its... more ugly head.Unfortunately the author short changes the reader, giving us a half formed plot and a stereotypical ending (possibly plucked from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark). The main protagonist appears to have extra superhuman reading abilities that includes the ability to generate electrical discharges. Which begs the question, Why, after thousands of years, should a new talent suddenly appear out of nowhere? The author gives himself the opportunity to tie this ability into the historical and mythological record via a librarian who has an interest in history (what about tying it into the legend of Thor?) but doesn't take it, so this new ability just comes across as a lucky and rather unbelievable coincidence. If there was evidence of it in the historical record - the denouement takes place on the site of the old Library of Alexandria, so plenty of old scrolls around to check in - then the final scene in the library involving the 'reactivation' would have a basis in fact rather than just appearing to be wishful thinking on the part of the antagonist and his brainwashed supporters. They had first hand evidence of Jon's destructive abilities at the school, and no evidence it would 'reactivate' any lectors - Pau would have been a good plot device to show this was possible, during the test at the school and getting zapped in the basement of the shop, but again the author doesn't see it.In the final pages the author even resorts to highlighting the 'coincidences' in the plot (such as the magical appearance of the Pinocchio book) as if that is a sufficient excuse, instead of trying to fix them.Then there is the small plot device that gets overlooked when Katherina picks out some sheets from the waste paper basket in the school basement and stuffs them in her pocket, but when she goes to see Mehmet and asks him to run a computer search on the school for details on the students she doesn't give the sheets with the students names to him as a useful starting point. As far as we know, they are still in her pocket. She also asks him to search on the chauffeur who was obviously dead when she escaped from the school.Most of the main characters, such as Clara and Henning, are left as just sketches, as though they had little or no life/no family before the novel started. And even Katherina makes little or no mention of her family apart from the car crash. We don't even know if Jon's mother was a Lector.A frustrating novel, and not an author I will be reading again.(less) less

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