This book seems to be something of a sleeper hit that I’d only learned about from a forum. It’s the first novel by Scott Hawkins whose day job is a technical writer of computer-related books. His success feels like it came out of nowhere but of course it’s really the result of decades of hard work and innumerable failures. Many others have described this book to the work of Neil Gaiman but I also detect some similarities with Susanna Clarke. The genre is ostensibly horror or fantasy, yet this is such a strange book that it eventually morphs to something like science-fiction.

Caroline is one of twelve siblings brought up by Father in the Library. Except they aren’t really brothers and sisters and Father is actually an ancient, god-like entity who adopted them. The Library itself is an immense structure located outside of space and time. It houses a vast collection of books collected or written by Father that records the entirety of his knowledge. Each of the children is assigned a catalog of books to study, so Caroline’s catalog is language, covering all languages that has ever and will ever exist. Similarly Jennifer’s catalog is healing, so perfect that she is able to even resurrect the dead. Their effective leader is David, a boy whose catalog is combat, making him a supernaturally powerful warrior. He mercilessly uses his martial ability to terrorize and torture the others to enact his will. At the beginning of the novel, Father is missing and the children are all barred from the Library by a powerful effect that kills anyone who gets near. All of the children are searching for a solution and Caroline in particular enlists a normal civilian, Steve, a plumber and sometimes burglar, as part of her effort. The children’s actions eventually attract the attention of the US authorities, especially Erwin Leffington, a former war hero who now works for the Department of Homeland Security.

Many contemporary horror or urban fantasy stories take place in some kind of demi-monde which feels disconnected from the real world. Caroline and her siblings live in such a world as well. They speak to one another in their own language, are unfamiliar with modern technology and are used to wondrous feats that we would call magic. When someone needs to venture out into the world that we recognize, they call it America and it is usually Caroline who does so as she at least speaks our languages and can fake being a normal person. But one of the great delights of this novel is when it describes Father as god-like, it means it. It’s one thing for Caroline and her brother Michael to be able to talk to animals or for Rachel to be able to know impossible things by sending the ghosts of her dead children to search through possible futures. It’s another for Caroline to casually call up the White House to bully the President in doing whatever she wants. Suffice to say that shit gets real and there is no way the real world stays separate from the supernatural world from that point forward. And the stakes just keep escalating from there.

Some reviewers have commented about how this book defies genre categorizations or might be confusing. That’s understandable because Hawkins refuses to be constrained to one point of view character or to stay in a particular genre lane. The perspective of Caroline who doesn’t know how to open a car door but knows how to speak languages that have yet to be invented is very different from that of Erwin, a veteran soldier who is brought in by the authorities to help deal with this impossible crisis. At one point, we even get the point of view of a lion! At the beginning the novel has familiar teenagers in a magic school vibe, veers sharply towards graphic horror and at times feels like a full-on action movie. It’s totally wacky, unpredictable and so much fun. It actually reminds me, in a good way, of online web fiction, in which authors are free to do whatever they want without being limited by editors or word length. Except this is a novel that has taken the traditional publishing route and so is properly edited with all of the polish that entails. This isn’t a short novel but it isn’t an especially long one either. Instead it is of the perfect length to cover this incredible story and the characters who inhabit this world, while answering all of the questions that we might have. I cannot emphasize enough how satisfying it is for the writer to perfectly anticipate what the reader wants and deliver exactly that in one neat package.

By now, I’m sure that you can tell this book has instantly converted me into a fan of Hawkins. Even the prose is right up my alley, being evocative enough to spark the imagination while not being overwritten, always being clear in what is going on so that there’s no confusion even in the middle of a fight, and spending enough time in the characters’ heads to let us know what makes them tick but not so long that it gets grating. I’ve praised web fiction many times here for being bold and original. But it’s also true that without an editor looking over the work with a second pair of eyes, they often go too deep into the author’s personal idiosyncrasies. This novel by contrast is just perfect. About the only complaint I have is that I want more of it, especially as this book covers very little of the catalogs of the other siblings. Fortunately for me, Hawkins is already hard at work on a sequel so you can be sure I’ll be on the lookout for it.