This book was an impulse buy on Audible based on nothing but the good rating, interesting title, and brief blurb. Based on those, I was expecting something more classic fantasy, maybe a cross between "The High House" and a Neil Gaiman story. It's actually more of a dark urban fantasy, however. There is torture, child abuse, murder (frequent and bloody), brief mention of rape, frequent drug references... all of which can have their place in a book, but none of which I was expecting when I picked up this book, so it was very surprising. It also takes a while to figure out what's going on and who's who, not to mention why anyone's doing anything they do. Be prepared to be confused a lot.

Essentially there's a very old and powerful man mostly referred to as Father, who has a Library filled with masses of knowledge divided into 12 topics (catalogs). Following a disaster that wipes out a suburban neighbourhood, Father adopts 12 orphaned children and teaches them to be librarians, each specializing in one of the twelve catalogs. (What exactly all of these are is unclear, only some are described in detail.) The kids are strongly forbidden from learning anything outside their own catalog (again, for reasons never well explained). Father seems to feel the best way for them to learn is through cruelty (again, never well-justified). At the start of the book Father has vanished, and the twelve librarians have been prevented from entering the library by a powerful spell/curse/charm/whatever. Has this been created by one of father's enemies? One of the librarians? How can they get around it? As the plot confusingly progresses we also meet a few "normal" humans and slowly piece together what's happening. Not a book I'd recommend if you don't like not knowing what's going on. It had interesting moments, it was certainly unpredictable, and it was quite original. Not a book I imagine I'll reread, however.