Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
The thing that makes Libriomancer really sing is the magic system. In this book, magicians (or Libriomancers) can reach into books and pull out items described therein. It's a really clever device and Jim C. Hines uses it extremely well, coming up with lots clever ways this magic can be used and creating a downright adorable urban fantasy world.*
To me, Jim C. Hines is best known for his blog and his writing about feminism and other diversity issues in Science Fiction and Fantasy.**
Not surprisingly, he does a decent job of diversifying the characters in this book***, and he even takes on women's sexuality and the problems with how that is portrayed in much of genre fiction. And honestly, I think he does a pretty decent job with these subjects.
So, yeah, cool magic system. Decent treatment of Issues of Importance to the Genre. Oh, and some fine action scenes and set pieces. I recommend this and am looking forward to the sequel.
* As a sample, the libriomancers are dismayed at the success of the Twilight books because it caused a new breed of sparkly vampires to come into existence.
** OK fine. To me, Jim C. Hines is best known for taking pictures of himself attempting the poses from trashy novel covers. For a middle aged guy, he's surprisingly flexible.
*** His principal female lead is a not-slender woman of color. But to be completely fair (and this is a mild spoiler) since her race is pleasure nymph, her color really doesn't affect her characterization. (I'm not saying that this is a bad thing or that skin color should have any bearing on behavior. On the other hand, this particular bit of diversity is purely cosmetic. Most of the characters (yes, except for the pleasure nymph) just kind of act like midwesterners. )
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