The Library at Mount Char

By Scott Hawkins

Urban Fantasy + Mystery + Lots of Others

The Library at Mount Char is a story where a person who I will only be referring to as "God" adopts a bundle of recently parentless orphans after the US president tries to assassinate God by bombing a local neighborhood park. This attempt fails - thankfully allowing us to continue the story - and double thankfully orphans 13 children who can conveniently be adopted by him and serve as the entourage of main characters we will be seeing throughout the story. These children are taken to a massive library on top of an isolated hill whose contents cover everything (and this is a quite literal everything) about a swathe of subjects relating to the secrets of creation and the world as it stands; War, Death, Nature, Medicine, etc... and are each given a specific domain that they will dedicate their entire lives to learning and mastering. Our protagonists domain is Language; not particularly important for this review, but I wanted to mention it since I might as well (not as in she can talk to animals and control anything she can speak to, she just CAN speak to them. So talking to a bird just means she's, well, having a conversation with a bird.).
These studies and these children lives continue monotonously until one day they find that they've been locked out of their house. Specifically, they cannot physically move towards the library without violently seizing up and bleeding, and God is missing so they can't get back inside. With God presumably dead, the group of once-again-orphans struggle amongst themselves to figure out what's going on and find a way into the library whose contents control the world.

Well, that seems like a straightforward plot, right? Wrong. Undoubtably wrong, and I am ashamed to have mislead you in thinking that. 

The Library at Mount Char is a hard book to categorize to genre. It is described online as "Science Fiction", "Fiction", "Fantasy", "Dark Fantasy", "Urban Fantasy", "Mystery", "Horror", "Thriller", and so on. For the sake of this review and to maintain some form of categorical organization for this blog, I believe the best description for it would be Mystery + Urban Fantasy with vivid mental imagery. 
You can expect from my vague descriptions that the plot is weird, ekphrastic and evoking, and fills me with what I describe as a narrative wanderlust. Do not mistake these words, however, for the plot being nonsensical. It is organized, it is structured, and it is clear in the rules it lays out for the story and its progression.

So, what about the plot? Well, the plot is not entirely linear. It starts off from the characters getting locked out of the library and as the story progresses the protagonist reflects on their thoughts of life after being orphaned the first time. It jumps in-between the modern present day and flashbacks which the characters recount to one another which reframes previous scenes and actions in a new light or context. Now, let me multitask and nip another worry you may have had in the bud; 13 children adopted by God. Does that mean that we will have 13 different perspectives and plotlines all running at the exact same time? No, no no. No. Don't worry, there will be no rapid jump-cuts between every single one of the 13 children's perspectives. There is more than one protagonist, but their perspectives are entirely relevant to the story and adds to the plot as a whole. I won't say who though as I'm not entirely sure if its a spoiler because I don't remember when they show up (could be Chapter 2, could be 20.) To find out you'll have to read the book. 

The lore. Why am I talking about lore, you ask? What worldbuilding and lore could there possibly be in the 390 paperback pages of - lots. A lot of lore, and a lot of good, solid, worldbuilding. It is endlessly interesting to me; even if you don't like worldbuilding in your stories, the lore developed and described throughout the book is phenomenally stellar when it pops up. It doesn't go into Lord of the Rings detail, and somethings are left unsaid as they are not relevant to the who, the why, the here, the now of the book, but they are fascinating to me just the same. It is not overtly complex either; none of the book requires you to make charts explaining who did what or why that happened. Everything is digestible and delectably consumable, explained in curt, simple terms, and most importantly adds to the whole of the story.

 The book is set in the modern day. Not overly significant as a detail, but I thought I'd mention.

Finally we have my thoughts. Yes, yes, we're cutting right to the end of the review and recommendation, as I don't want to spoil any surprises and to talk more would spoil much more. If you really want to get a taste for what the book is like, here it is:

Ethos, Pathos, Logos.
You should never get something unless you value it deeply and credibly, so what better way than the trifecta of persuasion.

You should get this book because:

Ethos - It is credibly good. Genuinely. Go to Goodreads, see the reviews! Its got mountains! I'm just one of many people who have read or have wanted to read this work.

Logos - Over tens of thousands of people have read this book, probably (I'm not omnipotent), and its sitting at around 4.5 stars. Statistically that's fairly good, in my humble opinion.

Pathos - You aren't going to read everything in life. You aren't going to get everything in life. You have a limited amount of time on this world; when was the last time you remember you sat down, cracked open a book, and really just sat there and enjoyed your time? When was your last memory of someone smiling? Dancing? Rain? Grass, the sunset even! The way I see, we all have to spend what little time we have wisely. Costs are running up, hearts are stumbling low, but in the meantime we might as well enjoy ourselves. I'm not asking for any money, not asking for you to shelve your life away; get a copy from your library, its free. You don't like it, you don't like it but - if you do, if you really enjoy what you read, at least you have something to remember. Might as well try it out.



That's my review. Hope you enjoyed, and let me know how you found my third favorite book of all time.



Also I remember 5 years ago checking if a sequel came out. Lots of people apparently also checked because the author put up multiple answers over the years. The short answer is - maybe, probably, wants to work more on it to make sure a sequel is actually satisfying and of good quality. Understandable, and honestly good on him. He also did a lot of books about Apache and Linux, if you are also interested in those.