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A review by tough_cookie
Bookburners by Mur Lafferty, Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Brian Francis Slattery
3.0
Sal Brooks is a Manhattan cop, used to all sorts of trouble, especially when it comes from her younger brother, Perry. So when he comes to her door late one night under suspicious circumstances, Sal knows he's done something stupid. Unfortunately, it's not the usual trouble she's grown accustomed to; Perry has become possessed by a demon called the Hand and disappears. Right on Perry's heels are the Bookburners, a motley group consisting of a priest named Menchu, a hacker named Liam, and an almost supernatural fighter called Grace. They explain to Sal that they work for the Vatican collecting and storing books that contain demons and fighting the ones that escape. Sal joins up with them in order to hunt down and save her brother, but she quickly finds herself in over her head in this new world full of magic and monsters.
This massive tome contains "season 1" of the Bookburners series, separated into 16 episodes. And the authors did indeed treat the episodes like a television series: short, fast-paced, some episodes not adding much to the overarching storyline. I was worried for a while that that was going to be the case for the entire read; the first half of the season just seemed to be trying to build the setting and give the reader greater insight into the individual team members. Safe to say I was bored for the first three or four hundred pages. But then the main arc began to take off and that really picked up the pace. I have to say, that definitely kept my interest, and I finished the second half of the book in half the time it took me to slog through the first part. It did also manage to end the season like one from a TV series: it left me questioning and deeply unsatisfied. So many things were left unsettled: Perry's "mission", Sal and Liam's relationship, Liam's feelings about Grace's "condition" and his own internal battle, as well as the snapshot incident that occurs at the very end. I know that's meant to keep readers wanting more and eager to read the second season, but it elicited no such response in me. I just wasn't a huge fan of any of the characters; Sal was a little too emotionally detached, Menchu held too tightly to his dogma, Grace was a little too cold, Liam too stubborn, and Asanti (Vatican archivist and part of the team) was simply too underdeveloped for me to get a true feel for her character. I did think she could be too arrogant, though. And the team overall just didn't mesh. There was too much constant friction, and when the time came for them to actually come together as a team, it felt forced and kind of thrown together at the last minute; any time someone expressed a sentiment similar to "I have your back," it didn't really work.
For what it's trying to be, the series is actually pretty good. It simply isn't my cup of tea.
This massive tome contains "season 1" of the Bookburners series, separated into 16 episodes. And the authors did indeed treat the episodes like a television series: short, fast-paced, some episodes not adding much to the overarching storyline. I was worried for a while that that was going to be the case for the entire read; the first half of the season just seemed to be trying to build the setting and give the reader greater insight into the individual team members. Safe to say I was bored for the first three or four hundred pages. But then the main arc began to take off and that really picked up the pace. I have to say, that definitely kept my interest, and I finished the second half of the book in half the time it took me to slog through the first part. It did also manage to end the season like one from a TV series: it left me questioning and deeply unsatisfied. So many things were left unsettled: Perry's "mission", Sal and Liam's relationship, Liam's feelings about Grace's "condition" and his own internal battle, as well as the snapshot incident that occurs at the very end. I know that's meant to keep readers wanting more and eager to read the second season, but it elicited no such response in me. I just wasn't a huge fan of any of the characters; Sal was a little too emotionally detached, Menchu held too tightly to his dogma, Grace was a little too cold, Liam too stubborn, and Asanti (Vatican archivist and part of the team) was simply too underdeveloped for me to get a true feel for her character. I did think she could be too arrogant, though. And the team overall just didn't mesh. There was too much constant friction, and when the time came for them to actually come together as a team, it felt forced and kind of thrown together at the last minute; any time someone expressed a sentiment similar to "I have your back," it didn't really work.
For what it's trying to be, the series is actually pretty good. It simply isn't my cup of tea.