Review: All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.
Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.
As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined.
Synopsis: Sorcery of Thorns has an interesting premise. We follow Elisabeth who works in what is called a Great Library. These house more than your traditional books. They also hold grimoires used by sorcerers. One gripe I have is that we don’t get to spend a lot of time in Elizabeth’s library. About 100 pages in, we are sort of thrust into a new environment which made it hard for me to fully understand how grimoire’s work in this world and Elisabeth’s relationship with them. Her relationship with a sorcerer named Thorn is also unclear. The synopsis refers to him as her biggest rival, but they barely know each other? Still, it is nice to read a single perspective fantasy. We don’t get a lot of that anymore, but it’s nice to see because I want to know if the author can flesh out their world with this single perspective. Elisabeth is interesting, but I haven’t connected to her. One scene I didn’t like was when she compares her library to another. That scene rubbed me the wrong way because I know that’s something that happens in real life. People will praise their own library and talk down about others that have fewer resources. I would have liked for Elisabeth to really take in this other library and suggest changes that could be made to fit the clientele, but it’s something reasonable that could be fixed. Not “spend a bunch of money to buy books and be better educated.” Though, this might have struck a personal chord with me because I just got my library degree. *shrug*
I think Sorcery of Thorns suffers a bit from the synopsis on the book cover. It makes it seem like there is tension between Elisabeth and Thorn, but I didn’t really see it. If anything, they very quickly learned that they needed each other. The other way this book suffers is the lack of a world. It’s set in libraries. Most of the story takes place in libraries, but that means we don’t get to explore that much of the outside world. Books that are set in boarding schools tend to work out better, and I think that’s what Sorcery of Thorns was trying to emulate, but it didn’t work for me. I thought the idea of the grimoires were interesting, but I wish they were expanded upon. I loved the idea of grimoires having their own personalities. It just wasn’t explored as much as I would have hoped.
Cool idea, but the lackluster characters and world was a disappointment.
3 howls
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