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The Masked City, The Burning Page, and The Lost Plot

3/5. More books in that series about the transdimensional librarian who hops from Holmes's London with bonus werewolves to prohibition New York and back again in pursuit of rare books, and also she occasionally saves the universe.

A pleasant diversion over a few weeks when I was otherwise occupied with such scintillating questions as who is getting fired? (Not me, it's cool). But as charming as these books are – and they are, even though I am utterly put off by the het romance after four books of attempted persuasion – even as charming as they are, they mostly just strike me as a live fire demonstration of how the copyright system hobbles creativity. These are books about a transdimensional librarian who regularly encounters fractured archetypes of classic characters scattered across dimensions. And yet all Cogman can give us is yet another Sherlock Holmes (yawn) and a lot of slightly bent historical figures. The century-long gap of material that she is not allowed to draw from is so gaping and so obvious, it's painful. I had the same reaction to Jasper Fforde (you know, before he opened his mouth and revealed that he is terrible) and it's just. Ugh.

But these are books about dimension-hopping librarian spies, and they genuinely are charming, so;.
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The Invisible Library

3/5. Irene works for a transdimensional library, which tasks her with retrieving a unique manuscript from a steampunk Britain with magic and fae and a Sherlock Holmes analog.

I liked this! I needed something uncomplicated – protip: don't read Illuminae when you are having a bad month – and this hit the spot. Bonus points for a protagonist who is some kind of queer, as yet unspecified; minus points for doing a lot of telling about the development of an unlikely friendship and not enough showing. But more bonus points for the actually terrible villain; minus points for the really really obvious setup for a later reveal which is going to be deeply wearisome Spoiler )no idea so mysterious gosh.

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