Three young people learn to overcome their pasts, be their best selves, and create magic in an enchanted library on a fantasy-tech world.
Read This Book If…
- Love books!
- Always thought libraries are literally magic and wished more people knew it.
- Enjoy found family narratives.
- Recognize that fantasy can involve good fighting evil without anyone dying.
- Want to explore a vision of what an agender society might look like.
- Appreciate seeing healthy polyamory normalized.
- Wish to support independent LGBTQ+ fiction.
The books are restless.
The Eternal Library is a magical place. And not in the way all libraries are magic. The Eternal Library is filled with literal magic, occupied by books with souls, and run by mages. But something is off, even before the Head Librarian’s death.
Tabby, Amane, and Rhiannon are a new generation of library staff. Can they grow their skills fast enough to influence the Library’s future? And will they know which side to join when the role of new Head Librarian is contested?
What is Gender?
The majority of the characters in this book use e/em/eir pronouns and the local language lacks a lot of gender expression.
Early on, two characters meet. Upon introduction, one requests she/her pronouns. The other obliges without argument, but reflects that e really wishes someone could explain gender to em in a way that made even the slightest amount of sense.
In some cases, it’s easy to determine which gender our society would likely have tacked to a character at birth. With other characters, it’s impossible. I found the agender default to be rather refreshing.
Normalized Polyamory!
This book is much more fantasy drama than romantasy, but it does show several romantic relationships, including one that forms over the course of the plot. There are people married to only one partner, but I remained hazy throughout the book on whether the other people in their lives were close friends or lovers. One of our characters has four parents. And two of our leads start in a queerplatonic partnership, but one of them experiences a romantic arc with the third while the other becomes close friends with her. To the best of my recollection, neither the word ‘polyamory’ nor the word ‘monogamy’ appears, but society appears to accept people forming whatever relationships work for the people in them.
Multi-Generational Found Family
In a lot of found family stories, people form deep bonds with friends from their generation or maybe a decade or so older. I’ve seldom seen it done with as large a generational divide as in this story with older adults serving as solid parental stand-ins.
The plot gives heavy importance to workplace apprenticeships in the Library. One lead has very dysfunctional parents while another has moved to a different country from hers. They find extra parental figures with the older library staff helping them learn the deep magic involved in bookmaking. The story presents these parent figures as very real people I found myself caring a lot about. If I’m being completely honest, I found them more engaging than the leads themselves, although that could be due to relating more to them. While they’re in their sixties and I’m still shy of fifty, I’m very clearly closer to a mentor archetype than an apprentice these days.
The love and support of their mentors is important to our leads, but the reverse is also true. The younger folks wind up being instrumental in leading the group to victory, even though the elders are the ones fighting to be Head Librarian.
Destiny is Following the Author’s Plot
I feel a need to draw attention to the main religion followed in the Library’s culture because I think a lot of bookish types will enjoy it. The core belief of this religion is that the universe is an unfolding story. Most modern people consider this a nice metaphor but not something to interpret literally. But, of course, every religion has followers who would reject that idea, doesn’t it?
The Authorists believe we, as characters, must not deviate from the plot the Author has written for us. This branch of the religion was founded by someone who proclaimed emself to be the Author’s self-insert. We see enough of em for me to be fairly certain e wasn’t, unless the Author hated emself very much.
Readerists meanwhile seem less intense while granting people more agency. They believe that as readers, we all shape the book’s story.
The two factions aren’t just flavor for the worldbuilding stew, but are vital in the fight for control of the Library, with one candidate for Head Librarian being a highly ranked clergy member for the Authorists. The groups do serve up interesting commentary on real world literature though.
First in a Series, But Stands Alone
You may have noticed that the cover bills this as the first book in The Eternal Library Series. It is, but it stands alone with a solid ending. And the next two books in the quintet are prequels, going back to when the older generation were the young. Which if you read above where I said the mentors stood out more to me than the narrators, you’ll know pleases me.
There are several books in my reading queue that will come before the second book and the third isn’t expected out until December. But I have already purchased the second book and joined the crowd funding pre-order for the third.
Details and Warnings
Spice Level: 1 (brief light kissing, some cuddles, no sex references)
Cozy/Intense Scale: 2 (almost entirely cozy, but with some tense moments)
Representation: aro-ace MC, gray-ace MC, pansexual MC, polyamorous MCs
Content Warnings:
– emotional abuse, manipulation, and gaslighting by parents to an adult child, and by a mentor/boss to an employee
– discussion of past emotional child abuse and its effects
– descriptions of anxiety, panic attack, and PTSD symptoms, especially dissociation
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