The Librarian of Crooked Lane

My kind of catnip, interwar story, magic as a bonus and some snobbery about it. Add in a magical library and a sarky heroine, Sylvia Ashe who is alone in the world, and is finding herself dealing with Gabe, who is a war hero and consults with Scotland Yard to keep away the terrors of his past.
Gabe accidentally gets Sylvia sacked from her job in a library and determines to fix the problem, the only way he knows how, and creates a job for her in the magical library. There she finds a home and he also finds that she has skills in linking information. He's got a girlfriend but their relationship seems based more on pragmatism than love.
It's complicated and messy and there are plenty of bright young things and it was a peach of a read.

I listened to The Librarian of Crooked Lane via a recommendation from Hoopla. Set in London just after WWI, the novel follows the exploits of a working class young woman, Sylvia, who is struggling to find work now that men have returned. As this is a fantasy novel, she is also trying to discover if there is magic in her family line. She contrives to meet a society woman who may be able to help her but ends up becoming connected to the son, instead, a war hero who specifically investigates magical crimes for Scotland Yard. They join forces to investigate the thefts of magical paintings. Romantic tension ensues, of course.

I enjoyed the story and the narrator did a good job capturing voices and personalities of a wide variety of show more characters. The next volume in the series comes out next week and I plan to continue with it once Hoopla gets the audio version. show less

Sylvia Ashe is a librarian at a staid philosophical society in London when the book starts. She is fired from that position when she is visited by Gabriel (Gabe) Glass, the only child of a time magician and a lord of the realm. Gabe is wealthy, a non-magician, and survived 4 years in the trenches of major battles of WWI, which is highly unusual. He is now a consultant for Scotland Yard on cases involving magic, since his mother is a well-known magician and magician's advocate. A magical painting has been stolen. Sylvia helps Gabe investigate. He hires her as assistant librarian for the Glass Library

A very trite story with a narrative that focuses on too many plot points: is it a crime and intrigue saga? Is it a romance or a fantasy with magical abilities? Maybe some social justice in the aftermath of WWI and its impact on societal norms in England? Oh wait, it's an art heist with the murkiest of motives and cardboard characters with no thread of events to connect the dots. And thus the novel is fractured, suspending reader engagement with unresolved vignettes strung together. The final chapter did no favours to bring a satisfactory ending, either.

Fun and light reading as Sylvia Ashe, a young woman entirely on her own a few years after the Great War, works as a librarian in London and pursues a clue to her origins left in her deceased brother's notes encountering the not quite so young Gabe Glass, heir to a Lordship and patron of the Glass Library. Gabe is working as a consultant for Scotland yard on the disappearance of a magical painting and Sylvia keeps getting more and more involved with the case, throwing them together. The story moves well but is so close to pure silliness that in never quite engages the feelings. Good for when there is a need for a light reading break.

This historical fantasy is set in England just after World War I. Sylvia Ashe is an orphan after the loss of her brother in battle and in mother to disease. She has found, in her brother's journals, a mystery. Is she related to a silver mage? She doesn't feel that she has any magical abilities of her own.

Clues lead her to London and to Gabe. Gabe is wealthy and his mother is a magician. Gabe is also lucky having gotten through several battles with no injuries. He has also recently become a hero by saving a young boy when a boat capsized.

Sylvia and her friend wish to meet Gabe for an introduction to his mother. Hopefully, she will have some answers about Sylvia's unknown past. But Sylvia soon finds herself entangled in another mystery show more when magical paintings are stolen from the gallery where she's been working as a packer.

Banding with Gabe who is consulting for Scotland Yard, the pair try to unravel the clues and figure out what Sylvia's part in the mystery was. To help her out, Gabe has also gotten a job for her in the Glass Library which is a large gathering of books about magic. Maybe some clues to her past are in those volumes.

I enjoyed this story which was a nice combination of mystery and magic with potential romance in there too. It is the first of a series and leaves a number of plot threads dangling. I look forward to reading more to see what happens next for this entertaining group of characters. show less

A historical fantasy mystery set in London in the aftermath of WWI, about a young woman who gets a new job at a magical library.

Despite sounding very much like my cup of tea, I was on the verge of not finishing it. I found some of Sylvia’s reactions unrealistic (for instance why wasn’t she more annoyed when her friend caused her to lose her job?) and questioned the historical accuracy of some of the worldbuilding. (On one hand, historical fiction and historical fantasy doesn’t need to be perfectly accurate and it’s a perfectly valid to throw in fantasy elements instead of historical accuracy, but one the other hand, I don’t actually care about accuracy so much as verisimilitude, I want the story to flow and I want to be show more convinced…)

But then I changed my mind, reapproached with adjusted expectations and it was -- okay. Finishable. (One of those books I’d like to send back in time to my teenage self, who would have appreciated it more.) I am slightly curious about some of the on-going, unsolved mystery about Sylvia’s family and vaguely invested in her romantic prospects. Maybe one day I will be in just the right mood for giving the sequel a go? show less