A review by missyjohnson
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

2.0

road trip audio book. This was such a bizarre mess I am not sure what to think. At times it was a mystery, then fantasy, then children's book, then maybe YA then maybe sci-fi. I listened on 1.5 speed and still did a bit of jumping ahead because some of the descriptions were so boring and long. Irene works for the Library. Her job is to go to alternate worlds to procure manuscripts for the Library. This is to safeguard literature and somehow to keep unscrupulous people from taking over some of the said alternate worlds. This particular story seems to take place in the 1800's but there are vampires, Fae, and werewolves and dragons. They also travel around London in handsome cabs that are electric and not pulled by horses. but there does not seem to be electric advancements otherwise. the women still wear the clothing of the time period for some reason. Irene is on this mission with Kai who seems to want to get into her pants within the first 15 minutes of meeting her. stupid. Then it turns out that he is a shape-shifting dragon. stupid. The narration was not all that great. often when the voices changed between Irene and Kai, it was almost impossible to hear what kai was saying and it also occurred several other times when folks were supposed to be talking low. the talking low part was certainly well done because I almost could not turn the volume up enough to hear. Irene is able to use magic to alter actions. all she had to say was things like "robot, stop all of you gears turning and stay in place" That was so creative! haha. Another point of the book was trying to use proper vocabulary and not make grammatical mistakes. Some of those points were interesting but not how anyone really talks anymore unfortunately. Irene and Kai battle alligators with metallic caps on their heads, swarms of silverfish, all kinds of magical booby traps, blah, blah, blah.