The Invisible Library

This novel was my first encounter with this author. Overall I quite enjoyed it, enough to continue with the sequel. It has a colourful and imaginative setting, the story is gripping, and the main characters are moderately engaging.It reminds me in several ways of [a:Jasper Fforde 4432 Jasper Fforde https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1528718375p2/4432.jpg]'s Thursday Next stories, although Fforde has a knack for inspired insanity that no other author can really imitate.For my taste, this novel is too busy: the scenario and the plot are both over-complicated.In the scenario, we have a presumably infinite number of parallel worlds (alternative Earths) that Librarians can travel between. We have the Librarians with their own kind of magic; the Fae or Fair Folk with their own kind of magic; the dragons with their own kind of magic; and all these kinds of magic are ill-defined, we have no idea what their limits are. We also have vampires, werewolves, alligators, zeppelins, and odd steampunk mechanisms.Among the characters, the protagonist Irene (a Librarian) is somewhat similar to Thursday Next: a plucky youngish woman who worries but copes. Her younger apprentice Kai is not what he seems; he has secrets. Peregrine Vale is a detective, roughly similar to Sherlock Holmes, but limited to one world, because he's not a Librarian. Alberich is not a legendary dwarf in this story, but a rogue Librarian with fearsome powers of his own, similar to Fforde's Acheron Hades. Bradamant is a female Librarian somewhat senior to Irene; they work for the same organization but strongly dislike each other.The complicated story frequently involves characters competing with each other to try to work out what's going on—you can tell that the author is a fan of detective stories. I find this kind of thing a bit tiresome, because I can't be bothered to try to follow their reasoning in detail or to work out what's going on myself: I just want to read the story and find out. It doesn't take me long to read a novel, so I'll find out soon enough.