The Invisible Library

Overall:A really fun, fast paced adventure with an interesting setting and an intriguing whodunit.

After 1st Reading: If you are looking to get sucked into an adventure involving detectives, magic, airships and book-loving-hero-librarians ... then this is the book for you.

Personally I don't think you can ever have enough book-loving-hero-librarians, or airships.

Gosh, I wish I had an airship...

After 2nd Reading: This story is based upon a very fun version of the multiverse. Here are the key points:

• There are an infinite number of alternate worlds (aka “Alternates”), each slightly different due to a key event, or difference in natural laws (such as the existence, level or nature of magic).
• Existing between these worlds is The Library, whose staff slip between the worlds to retrieve key volumes unique to each world.
• Also travelling between the worlds are The Great Dragons, who can assume human form and seek to bring order to the worlds, and the Fae who bring chaos to the worlds they inhabit. (we learn this pretty early on).

In this first book our main character Irene is sent to a deliciously steampunk world where things go a little more epic than she expected her simple book retrieval to go.

This first book is fun, fast paced, funny with a good mystery to solve and lays the groundwork for the much bigger tale to come.

(btw. it's three years since my first read and I still don't own an airship. Darn it. One day....)