A review by mairelon
The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman

5.0

The Lost Plot starts, as so many Invisible Library books do, with everything going spectacularly and catastrophically wrong and with intrepid Librarian Irene Sometimes-Winters right in the middle of it all. After a clandestine meeting with a politically ambitious Dragon, Irene and Kai are once again drawn into the world of Dragon court politics, this time to the backdrop of Prohibition New York. Behind the glitz and glamour of the city, gangs run rampant and dragons plot and scheme, threatening the safety of the city's inhabitants and the stability of the world itself.

I felt like I wanted an age to get my hands on this book, and it was absolutely worth it. I really enjoyed this adventure. Though it hardly gave me time to process what happened before the next thing went ahead and happened, it was a really fun read. I've always found the Invisible Library book exasperating in this way, but I love them all the same. The Lost Plot provides a look into Dragon/Library relations

Spoiler

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the book provided, as well as the insight into our mysterious protagonist's past. I particularly enjoyed the departure from "Vale's World" and, well, even Vale.

And, well, look as far as the ending goes

Spoiler

I loved the ending. I'm a massive sap. I love grand happy romantic endings an boy did The Lost Plot deliver.

I cannot wait to see what comes next.

The following is a series of quick, ill-articulated notes:

- As some may know, I am in the process of completing my Master's Degree in Information Management, in a effort to better equip myself for my job as a librarian. During this course, we were asked to think about the depiction of the the field in the media and pop culture and I coulnd't help thinking about this series.

- There are some obvious differences between a librarian's duties (shelving, reference work, cataloguing etc.) and a Librarian's duties (keeping the balance between powerful magical forces, going undercover to acquire rare books, accessing a world outside of time and space etc.).

- The Library also seems to function as more of a horde than an information repository. I really hope that the ethos of the library comes more into question as the series progresses. A character actually questions the point of a library that doesn't share information and I was like, hey yeah if you wanted to collect and preserve a bunch of dusty things make it an archive or a museum. So it'll be interesting to see how that works out.