ŷ������

On the surface this seemed to be a perfect idea. How can you not love a story of subversive Librarians fighting injustice and the State with gunslinging and Unapproved Materials distribution? I mean, a story about badass librarians is a sure must-read for me, a book-loving nerd. To quote Jo Walton, “Libraries really are wonderful. They’re better than bookshops, even. I mean bookshops make a profit on selling you books, but libraries just sit there lending you books quietly out of the goodness of their hearts.��

And yet this is the story that sounds good in theory but falls apart due to slipshod execution.

The worldbuilding is very thin, more of a sketch really. We know is vaguely Wild West-like, with horses and revolvers and sheriffs and 19th century worldview, but set in the near future dystopian world, with passing mentions of diesel and drones and such �� but we don’t actually see anything besides latex gloves in the end. There’s the State and the Resistance, and unidentified resources-consuming war, and the country divided in quadrants and a “Central Corridor�� �� but don’t ask me what any of that means or how it happened because I have no clue, it was barely mentioned and left alone �� but 170 pages should be enough length to give me at least *some* idea.

The world felt like a set dressing that is about to collapse of you lean on it too hard.

The characters were poorly developed and flat, and a few of them pretty interchangeable �� something I can overlook if the setting is well-done instead or if the plot is fascinating, but here everything seemed just barely sketched out.

And things make little sense. In this undeveloped setting we also have to suffer the painful wide-eyed naïveté of our heroine, and Esther’s jarringly cringeworthy insta-lust for Cye - out of nowhere, moments after meeting, literally *days* after Esther’s lover and best friend was executed by Esther’s own father, no less (a sexy love interest heals all wounds and fixes all half-baked tragic backstories, after all!), all of which combine to ring false.

“She had seen a man decide that she deserved to die, and she had killed him for it.��

There were interesting seeds of moral ambiguity with the revelation of a certain character’s identity as an assassin for the Resistance, a woman that is both inspiring and terrifying in her clear view of herself as superior to the more expendable ones, but that idea - and it could have been very powerful to explore - just fizzled out. There was potential for conflict with sending basically untrained person into the field in the end �� a choice that, besides feeling narratively satisfying, can also endanger those relying on the Librarians service - but that was passed over in favor of a neatly concluded arc that everyone knew was coming. Instead we got a sexy crush story and a bit of coming-of-age vibe.

And its message of equality was stifled in a very simplistically didactic presentation with little depth to it.

Usually I want a novella to go on longer. With this one, I was patiently waiting for to end, mostly bored and indifferent, hoping for my Kindle percentage points to move faster.

Disappointed.

Barely 2 stars.
—�Ĕ�Ĕ�Ĕ���
Now, I think reading my GR friend (who liked this book) s.penkevich’s heartfelt review is a better use of your time than the book itself. The review is wonderful and does what the book set out to do, but skillfully and briefly.

—�Ĕ�Ĕ�Ĕ�Ĕ—��

My Hugo and Nebula Awards Reading Project 2021: /review/show...