The premise is fantastic. In fact, when I fully comprehended the protagonist’s power, I swooned. In envy, with lust – just, how amazing would it be to have books speaking to you? To have the knowledge, the words, the ideas flow out of the book into you. To hear the voices of books, the actual voices and not just the ones you dream up in your head.Pretty amazing, huh? I think so too. Haly has that power. Or should I say, the ability to hear books speaking. In actual voices. Oh my. Okay, fine, I’ll pull myself together for the sake of this review.The world in which the story occurs is divided into two factions: the Literates and the Illiterates. Well, they are not called Illiterates but that’s the gist of it. The Libyrinth is paradise a very big building with an enormous amount of books and the Libyrarians who live there and care for the books do so peacefully by paying a tithe to the Eradicants (the Illiterates). The tithe comes in the form of books which are burnt – a necessary sacrifice if peace is to be kept. I cringe in horror at the idea but let’s keep moving on.The Eradicants can’t read and, in fact, most of them have never even seen books. They think that to set eyes on a book would mean immediate blindness and that the words in a book are dead words, killed as soon as they are written down. Which is why, they believe, that burning the books frees the words.I don’t know why I wrote all of that. I just wanted to. Anyway, the idea, the plot is innovative and original. It will certainly appeal to the bibliophiles. The book deals with the issue of hoarding knowledge and the fact that not all knowledge comes from books. The Eradicants may not know how to read but they do have the Song which is powerful and educating in its own rights. The writing flows well enough and the relationships between characters is believable. I liked the book but I just couldn’t connect with the characters in a way that matters. Let me explain why.As I have said before, the premise of the novel is rich, complex and layered. For it to be developed enough that a reader can submerge herself in the world, the pace needs to be necessarily slow. There needs to be development. I felt that the pace was way too fast. This could easily have been a trilogy and it would have made a wonderful series. There are three main characters in the novel and all of them are interesting. However, we don’t get to explore any of them in any detail. It’s like watching The Lord of the Rings trilogy in an hour. You fast forward so many important places, so much character development that even if the end result is one that you like, you still can’t help feeling that there’s so much missing. I know that this has a sequel but the characters in the sequel are different, the protagonists are different and I feel that it’s a shame that the wonderful characters we were introduced to in the first book were not given much time to grow.I also don’t see the need for the violence towards Haly. It’s quite explicit but it wasn’t discussed at all. The woman who helps Haly in the dungeon was forgotten and actually, a lot of the plot lines that should have been picked up and explored were left unaddressed.This is in no way discouraging you from trying out the book. I just mourn the fact that I feel cheated out of what could have been so much more.
