I remember watching the pilot of The Librarians with my mom back when it first aired. We both liked it, but at the time, I decided I didn’t like it enough to add it to my already overloaded list of TV shows I was watching.
My mom died in January of last year and a few months later this show popped up on Hulu and I decided to give it another go and I loved it. I devoured the entire thing while in the process of cleaning out most of my mom’s crap from her house. In going through her massive book collection, I found a copy of this treasure by Greg Cox and couldn’t resist adding it to my own collection.
I waited until I had finished the series before reading this, but that turned out to be the wrong move because this book was actually written and takes place sometime between Season 2 and Season 3 of the show, so there are a couple things from those early seasons that I had forgotten, and some “spoilers” from later seasons that I already knew.
In any case, if you like the show, you’ll enjoy this book. It’s also a super-fast read at just under 300 pages.
As you can guess from the title, this particular adventure is focused on Aladdin’s lamp, but as Jenkins put it, the wishes the trapped genie can give you are more to be feared than anything else, since every wish the genie grants makes him stronger and gets him closer to escaping his prison (which is actually a Chinese lamp made of jade), at which point he will wreak havoc on the world. As Jenkins puts it, “This Djinn is no cheerful cartoon character who sings show tunes while showering you with undeserved riches. He’s a malevolent, magical menace who has been stuck in solitary confinement inside a lamp for untold ages. Don’t expect him to be in a good mood.”
Unfortunately, the Forty Thieves are also after the lamp, and are so hellbent on getting their wishes that they don’t care what the side effects might be.
The story goes back and forth between Flynn tracking down the lamp in Baghdad in 2006 and the rest of the gang (sans Flynn) tracking it down in Las Vegas in 2016. Both times, they have the Forty on their tail trying to beat them to the lamp.
In 2006, the Library gets alerted to the fact that someone has found an ancient copy of the Kitab Alf Layla Wa-Layla, or what we in the West know of as The Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights. The text supposedly had clues as to the whereabouts of Aladdin’s lamp, so of course it’s been stolen by the Forty, which is why Flynn has to fly out there and see if he can beat them to the fabled lamp, which, of course, he does. His adventure includes exploring Scheherazade’s tomb, a ghoul, a magic carpet ride, a treacherous climb up a rocky trail while getting attacked by a giant bird, a cave-in, and facing off against the mighty Djinn himself.
Flynn manages to get the lamp and make a wish, at which point he wishes for the lamp and the genie to be hidden from the world forever, so how it manages to turn up in Las Vegas a decade later is anybody’s guess. The best Jenkins can figure is that, when magic was released back into the world, it somehow brought back the lamp and its genie, negating Flynn’s wish.
Somehow, a gambling addict got a hold of the lamp and wished for his luck to change, so people (including the Forty) notice when he suddenly starts winning more than he loses.
It turns out the top-ranking members of the Forty Flynn thought he had left behind on the deserted island with the magic carpet in shreds, managed to “stitch” the carpet back together enough to make it fly again. Except you don’t sew a carpet, you weave it, but whatever. I guess I shouldn’t bother trying to fact-check a book featuring a magical lamp with a Djinn that grants wishes and a magic carpet.
Aside from Flynn, Colonel Baird is the only one who gets to ride on the magic carpet, and she just barely survives. The high-ranking members of the Forty aren’t so lucky. She manages to turn in half of what’s left of the magic carpet to Jenkins to be put away in the Library (the other half tumbled to the bottom of the Grand Canyon with the second in command of the Forty). The lamp crumbled to dust when Cassandra wished for the genie to have an unlimited imagination. The infinite possibilities of what the genie could do with his freedom proved to be too much for him to handle – he was pulled in all different directions at once until he vanished into smoke.
The book isn’t very well written. There are many adverbs that don’t need to be used, less-than-impressive dialogue, and introducing Baird by focusing on her figure was more than a little sexist.
That said, reading this book still felt a lot like watching another episode and I will absolutely be reading the other two books in the series.