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The Archive of the Forgotten by A. J. Hackwith
I finished the second book of the Hell's Library series tonight! My feelings on it are a little more mixed than the first book, but on the whole I really enjoyed it.
I can't not mention perhaps my favorite side bit in the whole book:
I cannot BELIEVE we were only told about this and didn't actually get to see this happen. A.J. HACKWITH, I WILL PAY YOU SOLID CASH MONEY TO WRITE THIS OUTTAKE.
Anyway ... Hero and Claire are still my faves, together and apart, with Brevity a close third. I really appreciated seeing a lot more of Hero's developing sense of morality and his own existence apart from his book, and Hero/Rami was sweet even though I'm feeling kind of undersold on Rami (like ... I should like him, he looks like my thing on paper and he has his moments, but I feel that, as a member of the Library gang, he hasn't had nearly as much development as the others and his relationship with them feels more tell than show). I may have screamed inwardly when Hero's book disintegrated, and again when he fed his book to the Muse, and Hero mentally rewriting his own story from "There was a brilliant, deeply misunderstood man who was mistaken for a villain" to "There was a man who made bad decisions, and was a bad man" is ten kinds of wonderful and also heartbreaking and makes me want to hug him forever. (Hero raises such interesting thoughts in me about the nature of redemption arcs - because normally the biggest consideration is that they did real harm to real people and nothing can ever undo that, but Hero was a villain because his author made him one, and all his villainy was in a book, so it's impossible to atone with real people even if he wanted to; but it was all real to him, and so the most important consideration becomes how he deals with his own mistakes moving forward. It's just really fascinating.)
It was also really great to see Brevity show some flaws and dark spots in addition to being the cheerful, perky one, and Probity was wonderfully horrible without being as evil or monstrous as she could have been, and Claire broke my heart into tiny shards. The "monsters" conversation and the crying and .... augh. All the handholding and hugging at the end was wonderful, though I hope that the characters keep their rough edges and don't get sanded down too smooth.
The thing that kept bouncing me out of this book, just a little bit, is that the found-family aspect was (I can't believe I'm saying this) a little too textual and - this is hard to describe, I felt like the book wanted to explain things too much, emotionally, rather than just letting it naturally unfold like the first book did. The place where this hit me the strongest was Claire thinking of the others as family, and especially Rami - this is what I mean by the tell but not show, because I know they've all had at least a few months to be around each other, but for us as readers, they went from very cautious allies at the end of the last book to suddenly Claire thinking of him on par with others that she's been through (literal) hell with, and it feels unearned, if that makes any sense? I mean, in the first book I felt very strongly how the characters reluctantly bonded from everything they went through, and it made sense they could go from being vitriolic strangers to Hero slamming Brevity into a wall when she pulled him away from Claire, but Rami just kind of gets dropped into the middle of it and ... I don't know, I'd have liked it better if everyone started in a more cautious place with him and we saw it grow a little more. And Claire explicitly thinking the family thing felt a little too introspective for her generally emotionally oblivious self and a little too much like a blinking neon sign reading Found Family Here. I tend to like things subtler than that.
But at the same time, I got all the Family Feels I could have hoped for. Except not quite, because I want a million epilogues with everyone making each other tea and hovering worriedly around each other.
The last book comes out in the fall, and I am crossing my fingers for, if a happy ending is too much to hope for, then at least an ending that involves all four of them being together and at least reasonably okay with their circumstances. Also, more hugs. I just want them all as alive as they can be and together and not hating each other and looking forward to many more adventures.
I can't not mention perhaps my favorite side bit in the whole book:
"Claire and Hero are fine," Rami reassured her, answering the unspoken question. [...] "I left them asleep on the couch, though I'm fairly certain Hero was faking exhaustion merely to pin Claire in place."
I cannot BELIEVE we were only told about this and didn't actually get to see this happen. A.J. HACKWITH, I WILL PAY YOU SOLID CASH MONEY TO WRITE THIS OUTTAKE.
Anyway ... Hero and Claire are still my faves, together and apart, with Brevity a close third. I really appreciated seeing a lot more of Hero's developing sense of morality and his own existence apart from his book, and Hero/Rami was sweet even though I'm feeling kind of undersold on Rami (like ... I should like him, he looks like my thing on paper and he has his moments, but I feel that, as a member of the Library gang, he hasn't had nearly as much development as the others and his relationship with them feels more tell than show). I may have screamed inwardly when Hero's book disintegrated, and again when he fed his book to the Muse, and Hero mentally rewriting his own story from "There was a brilliant, deeply misunderstood man who was mistaken for a villain" to "There was a man who made bad decisions, and was a bad man" is ten kinds of wonderful and also heartbreaking and makes me want to hug him forever. (Hero raises such interesting thoughts in me about the nature of redemption arcs - because normally the biggest consideration is that they did real harm to real people and nothing can ever undo that, but Hero was a villain because his author made him one, and all his villainy was in a book, so it's impossible to atone with real people even if he wanted to; but it was all real to him, and so the most important consideration becomes how he deals with his own mistakes moving forward. It's just really fascinating.)
It was also really great to see Brevity show some flaws and dark spots in addition to being the cheerful, perky one, and Probity was wonderfully horrible without being as evil or monstrous as she could have been, and Claire broke my heart into tiny shards. The "monsters" conversation and the crying and .... augh. All the handholding and hugging at the end was wonderful, though I hope that the characters keep their rough edges and don't get sanded down too smooth.
The thing that kept bouncing me out of this book, just a little bit, is that the found-family aspect was (I can't believe I'm saying this) a little too textual and - this is hard to describe, I felt like the book wanted to explain things too much, emotionally, rather than just letting it naturally unfold like the first book did. The place where this hit me the strongest was Claire thinking of the others as family, and especially Rami - this is what I mean by the tell but not show, because I know they've all had at least a few months to be around each other, but for us as readers, they went from very cautious allies at the end of the last book to suddenly Claire thinking of him on par with others that she's been through (literal) hell with, and it feels unearned, if that makes any sense? I mean, in the first book I felt very strongly how the characters reluctantly bonded from everything they went through, and it made sense they could go from being vitriolic strangers to Hero slamming Brevity into a wall when she pulled him away from Claire, but Rami just kind of gets dropped into the middle of it and ... I don't know, I'd have liked it better if everyone started in a more cautious place with him and we saw it grow a little more. And Claire explicitly thinking the family thing felt a little too introspective for her generally emotionally oblivious self and a little too much like a blinking neon sign reading Found Family Here. I tend to like things subtler than that.
But at the same time, I got all the Family Feels I could have hoped for. Except not quite, because I want a million epilogues with everyone making each other tea and hovering worriedly around each other.
The last book comes out in the fall, and I am crossing my fingers for, if a happy ending is too much to hope for, then at least an ending that involves all four of them being together and at least reasonably okay with their circumstances. Also, more hugs. I just want them all as alive as they can be and together and not hating each other and looking forward to many more adventures.
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This is really interesting because... although he technically didn't harm real people, within his book his choices were his own. And I think with the understanding that his author would have developed him as a 3D character, he really had the motivation and the flaws that would lead him to those choices. Aka, the author didn't force the character into an OOC situation. Anyway, this is neat to think about, you're right!