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Apr. 18th, 2012 01:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsI read Pearl North's Libyrinth mostly for rachelmanija's YA Diversity Book Club, but also partly because it happens to conveniently align with certain other interests I have at this time (archives! apocalypse! final papers! but ahhh let us not speak of those.)
Libyrinth is one of those books that really just falls apart if you poke it too hard in terms of worldbuilding, but is pretty charming regardless -- it just wants to convince you that BOOKS can change the WORLD, guys! Our Heroine is Haly, who has the semi-magical power of having books read themselves out to her in her head every time she gets near them.
(Personally I think having this power would get really, really maddening after a while, but then, considering the books I am likely to have near me -- well, as an example, if I had this magic power right at this very moment, I would be hearing Mercedes Lackey declare No healthy, sane woman would find him anything but repugnant, although he did look mostly human from the nipples to the knees in my head as I wrote this review, and also as I tried to do my homework afterwards, and no.)
Anyway, Haly lives in a society built around a postapocalyptic library, which for some reason mostly stocks YA lit such as Life of Pi, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, and of course that forever classic, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight. At one point a character confesses that the one book she's connected with in her life is A Cricket in Times Square, which is certainly a great book, but . . . I would imagine really hard to connect with if you live in a postapocalyptic library with no knowledge of New York City . . .
BUT ANYWAY. Haly, her boss Selene, and her lesbian BFF Claudia end up going on a Quest to find The One Book With All The Secrets of the Ancients, and then Haly gets captured by The People Who Hate Books And Want To Burn Them. That's one plotline, and the backstory/rationale doesn't really make sense, but Pearl North does do a pretty good job of demonstrating how the book-loving society has some serious flaws and how The People Who Hate Books And Want To Burn Them also have some valid points in their distaste for them, and basically all the societies in this book do come across as three-dimensional, so I'm willing to run with it.
Meanwhile, Selene and Claudia are off in The Land of the Amazons I Guess Because Why Not trying to get up the resources to rescue Haly, and I actually really liked this half of the plot, because Claudia is a kind of heroine I feel like I don't see an awful lot -- not just because she's a lesbian, but because she's girly and gossipy and ambitious to the point of being slightly self-centered, and none of these things are presented as bad traits. POWER THROUGH GOSSIP! I wish we saw that more.
And then everything comes together at the end and . . . still sort of doesn't make sense, but hey, the power of BOOKS brings EVERYONE TOGETHER, so that's fine, right? Yeah! Anyway, I enjoyed it, that is the main thing. Although I still crack up every time I think about that time Haly comments on the fact that "the paper and ink used by late-period Earth publishers were nearly indestructible." Because if late-period Earth publishers are the generation that were putting out Dragonflight and so on, then . . . LOL NO.
rachelmanija's YA Diversity Book Club, but also partly because it happens to conveniently align with certain other interests I have at this time (archives! apocalypse! final papers! but ahhh let us not speak of those.)Libyrinth is one of those books that really just falls apart if you poke it too hard in terms of worldbuilding, but is pretty charming regardless -- it just wants to convince you that BOOKS can change the WORLD, guys! Our Heroine is Haly, who has the semi-magical power of having books read themselves out to her in her head every time she gets near them.
(Personally I think having this power would get really, really maddening after a while, but then, considering the books I am likely to have near me -- well, as an example, if I had this magic power right at this very moment, I would be hearing Mercedes Lackey declare No healthy, sane woman would find him anything but repugnant, although he did look mostly human from the nipples to the knees in my head as I wrote this review, and also as I tried to do my homework afterwards, and no.)
Anyway, Haly lives in a society built around a postapocalyptic library, which for some reason mostly stocks YA lit such as Life of Pi, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, and of course that forever classic, Anne McCaffrey's Dragonflight. At one point a character confesses that the one book she's connected with in her life is A Cricket in Times Square, which is certainly a great book, but . . . I would imagine really hard to connect with if you live in a postapocalyptic library with no knowledge of New York City . . .
BUT ANYWAY. Haly, her boss Selene, and her lesbian BFF Claudia end up going on a Quest to find The One Book With All The Secrets of the Ancients, and then Haly gets captured by The People Who Hate Books And Want To Burn Them. That's one plotline, and the backstory/rationale doesn't really make sense, but Pearl North does do a pretty good job of demonstrating how the book-loving society has some serious flaws and how The People Who Hate Books And Want To Burn Them also have some valid points in their distaste for them, and basically all the societies in this book do come across as three-dimensional, so I'm willing to run with it.
Meanwhile, Selene and Claudia are off in The Land of the Amazons I Guess Because Why Not trying to get up the resources to rescue Haly, and I actually really liked this half of the plot, because Claudia is a kind of heroine I feel like I don't see an awful lot -- not just because she's a lesbian, but because she's girly and gossipy and ambitious to the point of being slightly self-centered, and none of these things are presented as bad traits. POWER THROUGH GOSSIP! I wish we saw that more.
And then everything comes together at the end and . . . still sort of doesn't make sense, but hey, the power of BOOKS brings EVERYONE TOGETHER, so that's fine, right? Yeah! Anyway, I enjoyed it, that is the main thing. Although I still crack up every time I think about that time Haly comments on the fact that "the paper and ink used by late-period Earth publishers were nearly indestructible." Because if late-period Earth publishers are the generation that were putting out Dragonflight and so on, then . . . LOL NO.
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Date: 2012-04-18 07:00 pm (UTC)... sooooo they're going to the Library of Congress to find the Book of Secrets, then? Or elsewhere in DC to find the Lost Symbol?
*desperately keeping a straight face*
... also, please tell me you are going to write a review of The Fire Rose!
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Date: 2012-04-18 07:01 pm (UTC). . . oh, Aspen. You couldn't stop me from writing that review if you paid me. >:D
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Date: 2012-04-18 07:03 pm (UTC)I am so there. With popcorn.
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Date: 2012-04-18 07:42 pm (UTC)I like these ideas but the way they come together is odd and makes my brain hurt. I mean not that the other ones make that much more sense but they do to me.
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Date: 2012-04-18 07:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 07:48 pm (UTC)*clutches Phoenix and Ashes and The Serpent's Shadow*
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Date: 2012-04-18 07:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-18 08:48 pm (UTC)THAT SAID. I really want to read this book now. Silliness or not.
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Date: 2012-04-19 06:10 pm (UTC)