3.5
Codex Born
ByPublisher Description
Hugo winner Jim C. Hines's hilarious and clever Magic ex Libris series, where books come alive and libriomancer Isaac Vainio combats magical threats that spring from the page
Five hundred years ago, Johannes Gutenberg discovered the art of libriomancy, allowing him to reach into books to create things from their pages. Gutenberg’s power brought him many enemies, and some of those enemies have waited centuries for revenge. Revenge which begins with the brutal slaughter of a wendigo in the northern Michigan town of Tamarack, a long-established werewolf territory.
Five hundred years ago, Johannes Gutenberg discovered the art of libriomancy, allowing him to reach into books to create things from their pages. Gutenberg’s power brought him many enemies, and some of those enemies have waited centuries for revenge. Revenge which begins with the brutal slaughter of a wendigo in the northern Michigan town of Tamarack, a long-established werewolf territory.
Libriomancer Isaac Vainio is part of Die Zwelf Portenære, better known as the Porters, the organization founded by Gutenberg to protect the world from magical threats. Isaac is called in to investigate the killing, along with Porter psychiatrist Nidhi Shah and their dryad bodyguard and lover, Lena Greenwood. Born decades ago from the pages of a pulp fantasy novel, Lena was created to be the ultimate fantasy woman, strong and deadly, but shaped by the needs and desires of her companions. Her powers are unique, and Gutenberg’s enemies hope to use those powers for themselves. But their plan could unleash a far darker evil…
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesCodex Born Reviews
3.5
“Book two in the Libriomancer series is back, and in this book, our MMC Isaac Vaino is back and it again but this time he and his team are investigating Wendigo attacks after their group of werewolf friends tell them they have found a Wendigo slain. Does this have anything to do with Libriomancer Victor’s death? Or does it have to do with the devourers, beings that try to dominate the minds of libriomancers when they’ve jumped into one too many books?
Firstly, I said this in the last book. I will say it in this book. I didn’t like the romance. This is a series that I felt really didn’t need any romance. The weird threesome relationship between Isaac, Nidhi, and Lena was tre weird in this book, especially when I find out that Lena is in her early forties. I always thought she and Isaac were the same age, but it turns out she is more like Nidhi's age. I think Isaac is in his twenties. I just didn’t think the throuple added anything to the story. I felt like Isaac would have been just as focused on saving Lena in this book even if she wasn’t his girlfriend. I also wanted him to have someone that was all his. Why should he have to share women with his previous psychologist? Add to the fact that there isn’t a lot of romance, just implied sexual encounters and yea. I didn’t like the romantic angle of this story.
Although I didn’t like the romance between Lena and Isaac, I did like Lena and I loved that we got to see her POV through the snippets at the beginning of the chapters. Lena is a character from a book, born from an acorn taken from the book and brought into the real world. In this book, one of the villains of the story finds a way to make another dryad like Lena to help him re-create bodies from other books. These books have the preserved spirits/souls of real people, kept alive through “readers” who continuously read the stories to keep the people alive through Libriomancy. Lena was always a character I wanted to learn more about and in this book, we get to dive a little deeper into her history. We get to see how detrimental it would be if Lena, who was made to suit the every need of her lover’s fantasy, was in love with a mad-man. Lena is extremely powerful, and if she is connected to the wrong person, there would be few that could defeat her. I was so hoping the author would give Lena a friend, but she ends up having to kill the only other dryad she’s ever met.
One of the things I wanted to get more clarity on in the first book was more knowledge about libriomancy and how it works. I felt like this book for sure cleared up my questions, but then I had more. Why was Gutenberg the sole ruler of the Porters, with the ability to take away someone’s memories and powers? Why was there not some kind of committee to make those decisions? Additionally, it was obvious that Gutenberg was hiding things from the Porters, why did nobody but Isaac seem to have an issue with it? The things that Gutenberg was hiding were things that could have helped Isaac, Nidhi, even Jeff defeat Arthur before he destroyed half of the UP in Michigan! I was frustrated with that part of the book, not gonna lie. I didn’t understand why Gutenberg was still allowed full autonomy when we discovered he stole libromancy from China and killed the originators off. I also hated how they keep kicking Isaac off of the Porters when he is the only one doing what needs to be done to save the day. He deserved so much better.
I loved our cast of new characters from this book. Jeff the wolf was an interesting but intense character. The only point of reference I have for werewolves in twilight, so it was pretty funny to see that just like in Twilight, the wolves needed to remove their clothes before phasing or else it would cause issues. I read the synopsis of the other books in this series and I see that Jeneta, who we are introduced to in this book, is going to be a main character. Jeneta is a young girl who is kind of the apprentice of Isaac. She is a libriomancer, or someone with the ability to be, who can lull insects and animals when she reads poetry which she can make come alive even from an ebook. I wish we got to know more about her. She is introduced in the beginning of the book and then basically forgotten about until the end when we can see that she has been taken over by one of the devourers. Def gets me psyched to read the next book.”
About Jim C. Hines
Jim C. Hines has been a paid juggler, earned a black belt in two different martial arts, performed yo-yo tricks at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and lived with a brain-damaged squirrel. (Only three of those are true.) One of his earliest stories earned first place in the Writers of the Future contest. He’s published more than forty short stories as well as numerous fantasy novels, including the humorous Jig the Dragonslayer trilogy, the Princess series, which re-imagines traditional fairy-tale princesses as butt-kicking action heroines, and the Magic Ex Libris series, about a centuries-old secret society dedicated to the use and control of book magic. In 2012, he won the Hugo for Best Fan Writer. Jim lives in Michigan with his wife, two children, and an unstable number of pets. He can be found online at www.jimchines.com.
Other books by Jim C. Hines
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