The Library at Mount Char Is Like No Other Book on Your List

Hawkins has crafted a high-level fantasy that centers around the singularly unusual Library. At the center of this tale is Carolyn, whose world was upended at a mere 8 years old when her parents, along with most of the rest of her dull subdivision, were killed in a mysterious manner lost to the mists of her memory. She calls the event “adoption day,” as it is the day Father, a shadowy, god-like entity, took her and 11 other children into his care. They would become his Librarians, responsible for far more than maintaining the card catalog and reshelving A Game of Thrones. Each is given custody of one catalog, and tasked with rigorous study of arcane, quasi-magical lessons secreted away in tens of thousands of ancient tomes
Each catalog grants far-reaching power over a certain aspect of the universe, like the Future, or Healing, or Death itself. All well and (sort of) good, until Father goes missing, the Librarians are turned out of the Library, and the patriarch’s intricate web quickly unravels when tested by power coups from a dealer’s choice of abhorrent creatures.
Pages turn about as quickly as the chaos unfolds. When you’re finished, you’ll want more—but good luck finding it. The Library at Mount Char is a book with no readalikes. Following its narrative is like taking a long trek across a misty moor: you’re not quite sure what’s lurking ahead, but you know it will surprise you. Here are just a few of the reasons we find Hawkins’s debut so utterly unique.
A slice of fantasy for every taste.
Mount Char bends genres, but it revels in the all darkest corners of fantasy. Swirled together are elements of contemporary fantasy and magical realism. Gods and demons intermingle with Lovecraftian weird fiction. It’s a little bit Gothic, in the same vein as Poe’s characteristic descent into madness. As Carolyn and her “siblings” attempt to Nancy Drew their Father’s whereabouts, calamities pile up in his absence. When unholy powers start grabbing for keys to the kingdom, you can count on serious post-apocalyptic vibes: “Oh, you like the way your sun warmed your planet and kept you fed? It’d be a shame if something happened to it…”
High-level mythos…itty bitty living space.
It’s always a breath of fresh air when, at the end, a fantasy novel manages to end. Here, our finite look at the Library is in no way a sign of a lack of ambition. The Library itself stretches on infinitely; there is no end to its exploration. Yet Hawkins tells a complete story, with a mythology that reaches for the stars and with borders you cannot reach. As a reader, you simultaneously want more, and are sated nonetheless. That much of the action takes place in the remnants of a ho-hum subdivision constructs a nice frame for the universal power struggle to come. No matter how many mysteries you solve before closing the book, there is a pervasive sense that you’ve only scratched the surface. The Library’s power is endless, even if Father is not. Equally as strong is the sense that perhaps it’s better for all involved for some mysteries to remain just that.
“Who am I supposed to like here?”
Given the cast of characters is chiefly made up of the damaged Librarians and various space monsters, gods, and unpleasant demons, it can be difficult to find a purely likable banana in the bunch. Carolyn is our conduit for most of the action, and she has a wry wit that makes some of the more disturbing moments more palatable. But in the quest to find Father or replace him, as the case may be, Carolyn is forced to commit terrible acts. Steve, a thief-turned-floundering-Buddhist with the misfortune to be at the wrong bar at the wrong time, gets swept along this mad, merry adventure to the threshold of hell, and though flawed himself, he is a welcome addition, because despite his criminal record, he significantly ups the normal-ethical-center quotient.
The rest of the Librarians are a hard-knock lot, particularly David, whose tutu-clad exterior merely adds extra menace to a worldview honed by decades spent studying the “War and Violence” catalog. But this scraggly band of maniacal misfits actually underlies the real core of the story. On the surface, this is a supernatural fantasy, an turf war for control of the Earth waged by otherworldly figures. But beneath that lies a story about the tenuous grip we all hold on our own humanity. What if everyone you love was taken from you, and you were removed from everything you cared about—what would become of you? Life makes monsters of us all, they say, and sometimes literally. This is the real story of the Librarians, as their individual curricula engage their ever-growing neuroses, and it’s one worth the telling.