Book: The Librarians and the Mother Goose Chase (The Librarians 2) by Greg Cox
Release Date: April 25th 2017
Genre: Fantasy/Tv show tie in
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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Goodreads
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Synopsis
For millennia, the Librarians have secretly protected the world by keeping watch over dangerous magical relics. Cataloging and safeguarding everything from Excalibur to Pandora’s Box, they stand between humanity and those who would use the relics for evil.
Stories can be powerful. In 1719, Elizabeth Goose of Boston Massachusetts published a collection of rhyming spells as a children’s book, creating a spellbook of terrifying power. The Librarian of that age managed to dispose of all copies of the book except one, which remained in the possession of Elizabeth Goose and her family, temporarily averting any potential disaster.
However, strange things are happening, A window washer in San Diego who was blown off his elevated perch by a freak gust of wind, but miraculously survived by landing on a canopy over the building entrance. A woman in rural Pennsylvania who was attacked by mutant rodents without any eyes. And, a college professor in England who somehow found herself trapped inside a prize pumpkin at a local farmer’s market. Baird and her team of Librarians suspect that the magic of Mother Goose is again loose in the world, and with Fynn Carson AWOL once again, it is up to Cassandra, Ezekiel, and Stone to track down the missing spellbook before the true power of the rhymes can be unleashed.
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Review
I received a copy of this book through Netgalley from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
The Librarians is of course a title that will be catching to us readers. If you did not know, The Librarian was first a movie with a few sequels starring Noah Wyle. Movies I loved despite how cheesy they were in parts. A few years ago this movie inspired a tv show called The Librarians with three new Librarians while still having Noah Wyle’s character Flynn appear from time to time. This book is an extra story set inside this world, and already the second one by Greg Cox.
I’ll be honest and say I have not had the chance to see all seasons or episodes of The Librarians tv show. So I was very curious if this book would still be a good read for me. The answer is yes. You do need a working knowledge of the world and a bit of an idea of the characters but that is to be expected when reading this type of book. But other than that it is easy to read for those of us who have not been able to see a lot of the tv show. You also do not need to have read the first novel.
The writing in this book was solid giving us some more details and perhaps small bits of insights on the inner workings of the characters. I think my only complaint would be that this book is written as an episode of the show. It could be inserted in the show easily. The drawback of that is that this doesn’t always work in book form. For most of the book we follow Baird but we get the point of view of all main characters and the targets mentioned in the synopsis at some point. They split up in the middle of the book where we switch to another character every chapter. It pulled me out of the story of that moment here and there.
I also have to say that the start is really predictable story wise. I don’t think this is necessarily the authors fault but the formula of the show. Like I said what works on the screen doesn’t always work in book form. But the predictability eased out a little nearing the ending. I did guess that twist though!
The most important element however is how well the characters and the feel match up with the actual show. And that was done rather well. I could picture our characters pulling certain facial expressions. These characters all have their own quirkiness. I mostly could appreciate some of the thoughts characters had about each other, especially the three librarians. In that regard I would have preferred or would love to see a book entirely in the point of view of one of them with a lot more depth in thoughts. But one can’t get everything.
As a whole though this book exceeded by expectations. After having read various types of tv show novelizations I have had some duds. But I was happily surprised by the writing and characterization of the show. And I think this is a great book to stand next to the series for the fans.
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