The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

Well-written, unsettling, curiously strange novel.  The first part of the book left me slightly mystified, feeling that the intent was to scare off readers who might be faint of heart. As the story grew, and approached a somewhat more human scale, I felt more able to engage in it. I kept thinking that the gods of Greek, Roman, and Norse mythology have gotten whitewashed in our modern day thinking, that there is, in reality, a lot of violent action and deed in those stories, which were similar to the actions, in this book, of Father and of the librarians. It was the more human aspects of the story that drew me in, though, the stories of Steve, of Erwin. The happenings of Carolyn, of David, and the rest of the librarians, and even the library itself, felt oddly distant.  Not what I expected from the cover blurb.


Many thanks to LibraryThing's early reviewer program and to the publisher, for my copy of this book.


Tags: advanced-reader-copy, early-review-librarything, first-novel-or-book, great-title, has-an-ick-factor, made-me-think, read, read-in-2015, still-trying-to-figure-this-one-out, thought-i-was-gonna-like