I was saying I was in need of something light and fun to read and my dad gave me his copy of this book by A. J. Hackwith that he had picked up on a whim at our local bookstore. It was so much fun to read!
The concept is that the Library of the Unwritten is a library that exists in Hell, but is not ruled by Hell. The librarian, Claire Hadley, is very particular on that point. So she doesn’t have to answer to Lucifer, but she does have demons coming in and out of the library who just want to chill with a good book.
It’s called the Library of the Unwritten because it’s full of books that were never written. At some point, an author had an idea, but either never bothered to write it or ran out of time.
But these books are not books that just sit on shelves gathering dust. Stories are restless, and they want to be told, and every so often they come to life. They usually take the form of one of their characters and try to escape the library, so a key part of the librarian’s job is to keep books from running off. Sometimes they can be coerced into returning to their book willingly, but other times the librarian has to kill the character, which forces them to return to their book. Her assistant, Brevity, thinks this is heartless, but Claire reminds her they’re just books, they’re not people. Turns out Claire hasn’t always felt that way, but that’s getting into spoiler territory, so I’ll leave it at that for now.
Books whose authors are still alive are kept in a certain wing as long as there’s a chance their author could write them and they can go out into the world. Books are desperate to go out into the world, and they are drawn to their authors, since their authors are, after all, the ones who created them, even if it was only in their heads.
So, when one book escapes the library, Claire, Brevity, and a demon named Leto, have to track down the author so they can catch the book, hopefully before he does too much damage. Not that he wants to hurt the author, but just seeing him can do irreparable emotional damage. As a creation of her own mind, no other man will ever be able to live up to the ideal he represents for her.
They manage to track down the book, but not before he’s managed to track down his author and do some damage there. Now his story will almost assuredly never be written, but it’s OK because by the end of the book, he seems to be getting quite comfortable in the Library of the Unwritten, but again, I’m getting into spoiler territory here.
Meanwhile, a fallen angel named Ramiel encounters a soul who has managed to get hold of some papers he thinks will grant him automatic access to Heaven. The papers turn out to be pages from a codex Lucifer himself wrote, which means, if there are more, Ramiel can’t let them float around on Earth where they can do all kinds of damage.
Unfortunately for Claire and her team, they encounter some of the pages of the codex and grab them, assuming they belong to just another unwritten book. When Ramiel shows up and demands they turn over the pages, it starts an interdimensional conflict as Heaven and Hell fight over where the codex belongs.
I won’t ruin all the twists and turns for you, because you should absolutely read this book. It made me want to write every story that has ever popped into my head so they don’t end up languishing in the Library of the Unwritten.