Author: Sarah Prineas
Series: Lost Books
Publication: HarperCollins (June 26, 2018)
Description: From Sarah Prineas, author of the acclaimed Magic Thief series, comes a stunning new tween fantasy where books literally come to life!
The powerful Lost Books at the palace library are infecting the rest with an evil magic, and two unlikely friends must figure out who, or what, is controlling the books and their power. If they can’t, the entire kingdom could be at risk.
Sarah Prineas returns to her classic middle grade roots with this imaginative, fast-paced adventure for book lovers everywhere.
My Thoughts: Fifteen-year-old Alex has run away from home to become a librarian. He has spent his life learning to use a sword but his real desire it to care for books. In his world, books are locked up in libraries and protected by Librarians who are all getting old. He manages to talk himself into an apprenticeship with a librarian but the librarian isn't willing to share very many secrets and dies before Alex can learn much. When Alex opens the book he finds on the librarian's chest, he is attacked by vines that come creeping out of VINES: PLANTS OF WONDER and barely manages to get the book closed.
This isn't his first magical encounter with a book. When he was young, he read all the books in his father's library twice and then discovered one that was particularly heavy hidden behind some other books. When he opened that one, some letters crept out and turned into an advice-giving tattoo around his wrist.
Alex finally manages to find a position as a librarian in the Royal Library by impersonating the librarian he was apprenticed to. But the young queen Kennerett gives him only a month to whip her neglected library into shape. Kennerett is having problems of her own. Her uncle and former Regent Lord Patchedren is subtly sabotaging her confidence as she tries to learn to be a good queen. Also, her young brother Charley has been expelled from school again and she has to figure out what to do with him. So, since Alex has been begging for an assistant, she gives him Charley who has no interest in being a librarian.
Alex learns that 60 years earlier something happened that changed libraries. Some Lost Books were written with magical paper, magical ink, and magical pens and when they were finished the books killed the writers and drew their spirits into the books. The librarians managed to fight to contain the books in their libraries but now the books are waking up and making all the books dangerous. They seem to have a special grudge against Alex. Alex needs to find the Lost Books in the Royal Library and put them back to sleep.
This was an exciting middle grade story filled with action. It was also a story about doing what you need to do to follow your dreams. Best of all, it was a story about the power of books, words, and libraries.
Favorite Quote:
Wait. What had he just said? Protect. "Ohhhh," he breathed. That was what a librarian was, he realized, and he wanted to curse himself for being so slow to figure it out. A librarian was not just a cataloger, a sweeper, a duster, a collector of fras, an alphabetizer, a keeper of keys. A librarian was a protector. Of books.I received this one in exchange for an honest review from Edelweiss. You can buy your copy here.
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