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Oct 24, 2017aehdeschaine rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
This book, and its sequels, is composed of many parts that appeal to me: librarians, hidden libraries, secret societies, multiverses, time/space travel, strong female lead (in fact, it skirted dangerously close to the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde). I wanted to love it, but the writing just wasn't there. As noted by others, the pace and amount of detail were too frenetic and overwhelming. Also, I kept getting taken out of the story by lapses in logic. During conversations, Irene, the protagonist, would react to things that didn't seem to me to have been said. I couldn't follow her leaps of assumption (emotion? intuition?), and every time, I broke out of the action and puzzled over it. By the end of the book, I was grudgingly interested in the sequel, but it felt like an obligation to follow the story and not engagement in how the characters evolve. I do hope the inconsistencies smooth out in future books, because the story holds promise.