But What About the Whole Story?

Max Gladstone, Mur Lafferty, Margaret Dunlap & Brian Francis Slattery Bookburners: Complete Season One (Serial Box, 2016)

Some time ago I had the opportunity to read the first 3 installments of this serially told story.  Now I am able to read the “rest of the story” as Paul Harvey would say.

For a quick recap, Bookburners is an installment based story written by a variety of authors. I suppose I think of it like a TV show with weekly episodes each written by different people. Our heroes are a secret group working for the Vatican who travel the globe and try to contain (& bring to their secret library) various books that actually are magic. 

The more that I think about Bookburners as a whole, the more things that seem to bother me.  For such a lengthy piece, there’s surprisingly little character development.  While some characters are explored, others are never really taken out of the box.  

Second, the concept itself feels a bit tired and dated. While it’s not bad on its own, it does just seem like a dozen or so other things I’ve read or watched on TV in the last year or so.

Finally, there just wasn’t a compelling plot forcing me on to the next installment.  In order for something like this to really work, it has to have a forceful, compelling plot.  And I just didn’t feel that.  Perhaps structurally there were not enough cliff hangers between installments? Anyway, it made it way too easy to put down.

Train I Ride

Mur Lafferty “The Ghost Train to New Orleans” (Orbit, 2014)

Have you read The Shambling Guide to New York City?  If not, stop reading & go read that one.  Not only will I be dropping spoilers for that book, but it’s essential for understanding what is going on in this sequel.

One of the strengths of this series is that it is so not the typical urban fantasy series.  The protagonist, Zoe Norris, is not solving mysteries while in love with a mummy or whatever.  She’s just a (sort of) normal woman trying to publish travel guides.  Only she finds out that she’s a citytalker and the travel guides are for supernatural beings.

In this second volume of the series, Zoe & crew go to New Orleans to work on the second book in their series of travel guides.  Of course things don’t exactly go as planned & Zoe finds herself mixed up in some serious trouble.  Along the way Lafferty is able to do more of her unique world building as well as the light hearted adventure that was so entertaining in the first volume.

If you enjoyed The Shambling Guide to New York City you will enjoy this as much or more.  Unfortunately this volume doesn’t really hold up as a standalone book, so if you are interested go back & start with the first volume.