Book Review: Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines

It's every nerd's dream: pulling Excalibur, a phaser, or a magic potion out of your books to use against your enemies. This ability is real; it's called Libriomancy! Libriomancers work for the ancient group know as Porters to manage the influx of vampires and other literary evils accidentally allowed into our world through book magic. There's a problem though, someone is killing people on both sides! It's up to librarian, geek, and Libriomancer Isaac and his dryad friend to track down the culprit and return the world to normal. The only problem is Isaac was relieved of field duty two years ago for abusing his magic.

This book turns Urban Fantasy on its head. This is our world - with computers, and fandoms, and Twilight movies - but within our world are the creatures that have grown from the use of libriomancy: vampires, and Isaac's dryad friend, and chupacabras crossbreeding with poodles. It's a world where words have power; a libriomancer could theoretically pull micro black hole out of a book and destroy the planet!

I'm a fan of Jim C. Hines. I loved his Princess series, but I haven't tried out his Jig the Goblin series yet. When I heard he was writing a new series, I knew I had to read it. You should too! What's the opposite of disappointing? This book! Isaac is a geek to be reckoned with; not only is he a fan of multiple fandoms and has read just about every SF/F book there is, and more in other genres, he can remember specific passages and page numbers from those books to serve his magic needs. The author conveniently provides a complete list of every book referenced within the pages of Libriomancer, even the made up books! (I seriously thought Vulcan's Mirror was a real Trek book.)

I don't know if you can to tell from this review yet, but I liked this book. And I'm excited to see where the series goes from here. If you're not interested in starting another series, fear not, Libriomancer satisfies perfectly well as a standalone novel.

Fans of fantasy, urban fantasy, and science fiction should love Libriomancer!

Libriomancer was provided to me by the publisher for review, and should be available everywhere books are sold on August 7, 2012.