Bingo 12 (Youths!)
I have to admit I’d really gotten close to giving up on The Great Library Series. The last volume was pretty bad; it had little action, and a lot of the characters started to look bad or empty. Thankfully, many of those issues were resolved in Smoke and Iron (Great Library #4).
Smoke and Iron begins where Ash and Quill left off. Jess and his twin Brandon have switched places, and “Brendan” goes to the Great Library to hand over Morgan (beloved of Jess and powerful Obscurist who now can suck the life out of anything living) and Scholar Wolfe (teacher of Jess and friends) as a gesture of goodwill to show that “Brendan” is loyal to his father’s business and wants to bargain. Now the game is afoot.
Wolfe has been an enemy of the library before and almost lost his mind during his last imprisonment, so he’s fighting those demons while trying to figure out what’s going on and what he’s supposed to do. “Brandon” has to make sure that his ruse is not discovered and that his tricks succeed and put him in a place to destroy his enemies, and hopefully not resulting in the death or destruction of anyone he cares about. His friends are mostly trying to figure out what’s going on and how to stop the evil administrators who have been abusing their power. Khalia discovers some things about herself, and starts to make some decisions about her future, Dario continues to be himself but we do learn about his background a bit, Glain and Thomas don’t change much, but they’re there, and Santi tries to keep himself together and keep everyone alive while inside he’s desperately worries about Wolfe (his lover).
There is much intrigue and the revelation of a few new characters, one of whom will likely feature prominently in the next (and I think last?) novel of the series, which is forthcoming. The new people consist mostly of some new figures among the Obscurists, with whom Morgan interacts while trying to find weaknesses and ways to escape and help “Brandon”. Morgan meets Annis first, who is friendly although not especially powerful, and the two become buddies. They eventually find Eskander, an Obscurist of immense power who has been living in self-imposed isolation for years. Eskander as it turns out figures into a part of the story which likely will come back, but here he helps Morgan figure out what’s going on with the sucking life out of things issue of hers. That bit really helped me start to not not care about Morgan at least a little.
The novel ends on a sort of cliff hanger, with a betrayal that’s bad but not entirely unexpected, and Jess loses someone important. The bad guys are on the run though, so next it’ll be up to our heroes to keep taking back the Library and its powers for good, but the baddies are still out there, so who knows how many will walk away. I can guess at at least one who won’t but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.