The Untold Story (The Invisible Library#8) Review

In this thrilling historical fantasy, time-traveling Librarian spy Irene will need to delve deep into a tangled web of loyalty and power to keep her friends safe.

Irene is trying to learn the truth about Alberich-and the possibility that he's her father. But when the Library orders her to kill him, and then Alberich himself offers to sign a truce, she has to discover why he originally betrayed the Library.

With her allies endangered and her strongest loyalties under threat, she'll have to trace his past across multiple worlds and into the depths of mythology and folklore, to find the truth at the heart of the Library, and why the Library was first created.

Before I start and if you are a die-hard fan of this series looking for multiple books in-depth review you should stop and adjust your expectations. I had absolutely no idea that this book was the 8th in a series when I got it but I was so enamoured by the synopsis that I read it in less than a day. (I simply could not put it down and I'm ecstatic that there are seven more of these.)

General Impressions

The first thing that had my attention only a couple of pages in was the scope of the world-building and how original this series is. Seriously, this series is the stuff serial readers dreams are made off: a secret organization of librarians whose job is collecting all kinds of books across the worlds?! Oh and there's elves, dragons and a sentient library. The love for stories and books just oozes out of every page.

Now, because I started this series in The Untold Story I know that I lost some of the gravitas when it came to some of the secondary character arcs but I still enjoyed the story a lot, so if like me you are considering picking up this book by itself, the story will absolutely make sense and the author makes a stellar job out of providing you with the context and background you need.

Irene, the heroine in particular left me absolutely gobsmacked - she is absolutely amazing in how she faces every challenge head-on without either expecting to be saved by anyone or pushing her accomplices away while suffering from a case of overblown confidence or meaningless self-sacrifice almost always found in main characters. This is a book that breaks the mould when it comes to their main characters train of thought while winking at all the overused tropes we are used to seeing and rolling our eyes at, which made it all the more enjoyable.

With this book featuring travel among all kinds of worlds and timelines, we also get to see not only Irene adapt to the costumes of the time but characters native to those timelines behaving in a believable way and being shocked when Irene or her friends slip up in their covers. That was not used as an excuse to feature sexism or racism or any other kind of discrimination though which was a nice break.

Irene is an interesting character to read not only because of her proficiency when it comes to being a spy and book thief but because she is in her thirties. That makes a nice change from seeing only heroines in their teens to twenties as protagonists because surprise, women don't stop being interesting or desirable at 29! While she is fully established at her job and confident in her mind and ways she is also understanding of the younger characters' impatience or ignorance and provides mentorship and valuable advice to many throughout the novel. She is someone that respects other people's thoughts and opinions without trying to bend them to her way but does not stand for being belittled or making concessions when it comes to being treated with respect when she feels is owed it.

When it comes to the romance front, this is mostly a plot-heavy book but Irene is in a committed relationship with Kai, someone from a completely different species and culture and all the things that separate them are addressed throughout the book but the love and respect they feel for each other is too. I loved how the author was able to make the reader understand that these two were in a committed physical relationship without featuring as little as a kiss throughout the entire book. Also, the fact that these two discussed their problems and counselled each other without trying to force the other to choose their relationship or what they thought was best was so wonderful to read. I'm such a fan of authors choosing to portray healthy relationships where people talk and listen instead of acting dramatically.

Conclusions

This is a book to be immersed in (and I cannot understand for the life of me how I had never heard about it before). The world-building is amazing, the characters are complex and believable in a way that is rarely found in fantasy as are the themes featured and thanks to Irene's job, the dialogues are an absolute delight to get lost in, taking sometimes multiple reads for me to understand how all characters are trying to influence or manipulate the others into joining their faction.

With the added element of the elves and dragons, the reader also gets to read about prejudice and culture shock as well as story vs History, the importance of fairytales, politics, discrimination and living under an archetype which I read as a metaphor for classism and privilege in our world in how. I will definitely make my way through the rest of this series.

Thank you to Black Crow Pr and Pan MacMillan for this ARC.

Rating: 4/5