by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty and Brian Francis Slattery (Gladstone)
I stumbled upon a reference to this online serialized novel, and checked to see if the library had it — and lo-and-behold, we do! Bookburners was designed as an online book, co-written by four genre authors and released one chapter at a time. It started in 2015, and five “seasons” were released online. The first “season” of sixteen chapters was subsequently released in this large trade paperback edition (no subsequent seasons have come out in print form).
Sal Brooks is a New York City police detective, but more importantly she’s also the big sister to her screwed-up brother Perry, who she’s had to rescue from various bad situations over the years. But his latest problem is way beyond her experience — he’s been possessed by an actual demon, who had been released from an ancient book that Perry got his hands on. When a team of specialists from the Vatican, including a priest, a computer hacker, a diminutive martial artist, and an archivist show up to claim the book, Sal hitches her wagon to their cause…and is initiated into the Societas Librorum Occultorum’s “Team Three”. That team is assigned to contain outbreaks of supernatural activity, tied to artifacts or ancient texts. Sal joins them, in hopes of learning something that could save her now-comatose brother. But dealing with supernatural threats, both small and massive is a new job, which she pretty much has to learn on the fly.
The central characters — the members of Team Three — are all intriguing and I definitely felt myself invested in their fates. The tone of this story reminded me strongly of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — lots of snappy, snarky dialog, fast-paced action, and serious situations interspersed with the absurd. At the same that I was loving the best of this story, I was also rolling my eyes at the “Oh, really?” moments that made it a bit uneven.
None-the-less, fans of Buffy/Angel, Supernatural, Ghostbusters, The X-Files/Millennium, Shadow Chasers, Warehouse 13 or Friday the 13th: The Series, should enjoy this. In fact, it most closely resembles those last two — Warehouse 13 dealt with a government project to locate, recover and contain artifacts with a paranormal connection in a gigantic hidden warehouse; and Friday the 13th: The Series dealt with representatives of an antique store that specialized in “cursed” items trying to recover many of the objects that accidentally escaped from the store.
And, if you like this print book of Bookburners first season (790 pages!), be aware there are three more “seasons” of this paranormal “show” you can read as E-books.
(If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try any of the TV series mentioned in my review, particularly Warehouse 13, and Friday the 13th: The Series. The libraries own all five seasons of Warehouse 13 on DVD, but you’d have to search elsewhere for Friday the 13th: The Series (2 seasons) — it did come out on DVD, so could be borrowed through InterLibrary Loan.)
( official Bookburners page on the official Max Gladstone web site )
Recommended
by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library — Public Service
Have you read or listened to this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
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New reviews appear every month on the Staff
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