Review: The Mortal Word

The Mortal Word by Genevieve Cogman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fun series, and I love the main character, whose general attitude is, "Everyone's trying to kill me and bring about terrible consequences for the multiverse, and I could really do with a break from that, but hey ho, no use whining, let's get on and thwart them again."

The setting is a peace conference of sorts in an alternate-world Paris between the dragons (who are forces of order) and the fae (forces of chaos), with the Librarians, who try to keep a cosmic balance so that humanity can continue to survive in the multiverse, acting as neutral arbiters. The protagonist is a Librarian who has a history of foiling plots and figuring out culprits, and when there's a murder at the conference, she's called in, along with a Great Detective from the alternate London where she's based and representatives from both the fae and dragon sides.

Cue plenty of action, scary fae and dragons defied and escaped, and development of long-running relationships that have been building through the series, all conveyed by a lot of sound, capable writing. Even if I didn't like Irene as much as I do, I'd still read this series, just because it's far more competently written than most of the other books I come across.

The weakness of the series for me - and it's not a big one - continues to be the magic system. There's a clearer definition in this book of what the quasi-magical Language of the librarians requires (you have to clearly name a thing and describe what you want it to do, seemingly within its nature, and the larger the thing you're influencing the harder it is), but it still remains a bit vague and plot-convenient. Also, it takes a physical toll on the librarian who uses it, but in practice, even when Irene has supposedly almost crippled herself with a headache from using the Language, she still has one or two more uses of it in her as needed. At one point, when she'd made what was described as an "ultimate effort," I made a small bet with myself that she'd use it at least once more within the same scene; nor was I wrong.

Setting that aside, these are excellent books and I recommend them (but start from Book 1).

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