THE GREAT LIBRARY OF TOMORROW

A group of chosen adventurers set out to rescue a dragon and save the world.

Perennia is missing. The dragon who lives in the Rose Garden with the Cerulean Rose—an essential ingredient in the Elixir of Life—has disappeared. Thanks to a head injury, Helia, the Sage of Hope, can’t remember what happened; all she knows is that the villainous Ash Man, Suttaru, has returned to destroy all of Paperworld. At home in the Great Library of Tomorrow, she enlists help from her fellow library workers, Mwamba and Nu, to stop him. But the Book of Wisdom that powers the Great Library has been compromised along with the destroyed Rose Garden. Together with Dzin, a young Runner who recently crafted the formula for his very own Elixir of Life, the three Library workers set out to recover Helia’s stolen memories and piece together what happened to Perennia. Solace has built a richly populated universe here, but the worldbuilding is more often than not spewed out in chunks of awkward dialogue, as solutions to the characters’ problems appear seemingly out of thin air. This leaves the reader to learn about key plot points, background items, and MacGuffins just a hair too late, with no opportunity to figure out the book’s many mysteries for themselves. The characters flounder their way through clunky explanations and paper-thin excuses for not knowing even the most basic information, which the audience must wade through to get from point A to point B. On the positive side, Helia is an active protagonist. Readers who can look past the maladroit way the novel dispenses information may be in for a treat, but many fans of epic fantasies—particularly about fantastical libraries—will be left disappointed.

A sweeping fantasy that cracks under the weight of its own worldbuilding.