What a ride!

I've read a few urban fantasy books, but stopped reading even more. The genre always appealed to me. I grew up reading World of Darkness TTRPG rulebooks. But most novels I read felt too eager to fulfill fantasies without any care for being a good novel.

I'm not saying this is untrue of The Library at Mount Char. It's also mostly focused on hitting a series of fantastic dioramas with little care for what happens in between. But come on! These dioramas are really cool! And there are so many of them! Just non-stop cool scenes! Everything is over the top. And I mean OVER THE TOP!!!

I think a cornerstone of this genre is wacky situations that must be resolved with a perfectly logical explanation hundreds of pages later. "No time to explain! You must stick this banana in the tiger's ear or we all die!" This is taken to the extreme here. Nothing makes sense in the first 100 pages. I love this formula. (I didn't love that the wacky thing was often torture or murder.)

The conclusion of the plot takes this to the next level, with hidden messages in childhood memories providing the "perfectly logical" explanations. I think that's a perfect way to end the book.

An intention to have a meaning and characters you can connect with are important pillars of a good novel. This novel doesn't have them, at least not for me. Yes, we have a wacky cast of more than a dozen characters with well presented, diverse personalities and other traits. A bloody warrior in a pink tutu, a cunning librarian, a kind naked guy who is used to living with animals, etc. Somehow none of them works as an anchor for the reader. They have plenty of curious traits, plenty of scenes, and still I didn't care about anybody. Everybody is either evil or an idiot. Only Carolyn has a goal. Steve getting hyperfocused on saving Naga is out of the blue, but a valuable emotional motor while it lasts!

That said, this novel works fine without meaning or good characters. There's plenty of that stuff in other books. It's okay to just be a fun ride!