Le Bilbliomancien

The full review can be found over at the SFF Book Review.

A fresh writing style, some cool ideas, and a fire-spider called Smudge. These were the things I loved about the books. I hated the romantic interest, Lena. You can tell the author was trying hard to create a “strong, female character” but she ended up as a flat creature who is only there to give the protagonist a boner and save his ass occasionally. I still don't understand why there had to be romance at all - and the way that “romance” ends was just so wanna-be special. It made me groan.

That said, there are great things about this novel. It is a quick read, even though there are some pacing problems in the middle, and some side characters are deliciously likable. Smudge is my favorite but I also like Ponce de Leon's mysterious nature and some of the vampires.
The idea of taking objects out of books via magic is intriguing and I hope the author will explore it more in the next book. Because even though we get a lot of libriomancer-talks-to-dryad info-dump, the world building is not that great. Or at least, we don't get to see much of it.

In conclusion, this could have been a much better book. But it made me want to check out some of the author's other works. After all, he did make me laugh!