I received my free copy of The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins thanks to the giveaway on Goodreads.

Where to begin...where to begin....I’ll admit I was confused at first. I was lost...I chalked it up to the fact that I am fairly new to the whole fantasy genre. I was struggling a bit but I trudged forward...often times going back to re-read a page or two. I finally realized that it had more to do with the book than with my lack of experience..but to be fair maybe it was a mixture of both. Yes, this book jumps right in with this group of 12 mythical misfits, totally human appearing in every way with the exception of their insane mastered abilities, their unusual dialect, and the fact that they just don’t have enough fashion sense required to blend in normally with society. They refer to themselves as “brothers and sisters" who have one “Father”..only he is not really their father, he just adopted them. The Librarians, they have lived their lives among the human world while learning from specifically assigned catalogs. Each catalog contains certain abilities that they spent their lives mastering.There is chaos and violence and these need-to-know abilities and you soon realize you have no real reason why this all to came to be or how or if they even are mythical....YET.  The book just keeps jumping from past to present, from regular everyday human stuff to out of this world bat shit crazy another dimension happenings and because of that I kept wondering if maybe I was missing something along the way...still I kept going because I just had to know.

Almost immediately I was intrigued by one particular character of all the lot.  A violent beast of a being that sports a lavender tutu..goes by the name of David. Just regular ole David, only he is massive in size and presence and knows every single way to mutilate and maim someone because it’s his ability to know how to based on the catalogs assigned to him by “Father”. The guy does not hold back and because of that we get all the gore-y details.  I realized though that there was not much more to his story as I wanted so badly for there to be. Maybe a small reveal in the end but not a mind blowing one. There are other characters with all their own abilities...as I mentioned earlier, these are all the children of this “Father”. From Michael, to Carolyn, Jennifer, some regular guy named Erwin that’s tough as nails, tactical, street smart and not one of the 12 adopted kids, there’s a lion, a yard full of killer dogs, and then there’s Steve, a guy that seems more on the regular human side but through Carolyn we feel there is a little something more about him. Carolyn obviously has something going with the guy because she keeps bringing him back from the dead. Yes..back from the dead..that happens a few times in the book.  Carolyn’s story is quite significant although we have no clue how or why until we get closer towards the end.

Yes, there is so much going on and yet we are still a little lost...There is something of a mini-betrayal waged within the group and outside of it. Someone from another realm is always trying to take the place of “Father” who by the way goes missing early on. His children are trying to figure out if he is dead or just hiding and the only way that they can go home (a library of epic proportions unlike anything we can ever imagine hidden within a modest house within what appears to be a regular but oh so not regular neighborhood) is by finding him...There is war and extreme detailed violence with the humans and animals that get in the way of this mission...the mission that we don’t have details about until we get towards the end. If you like gore there is gore....and if you like gore and humor there is that too. Yeah this is the kind of book where you can find yourself wincing at the description of someone’s limb being ripped from the body to laughing at something funny that was said during or around that same moment.  

Halfway through I discovered myself more lax to the story and realizing “this is getting good”. I had to get past some of the graphic stuff but more is revealed as you move along and the story starts to make some sense...there is a flow.  Then we get to the end. The whopper of an end where everything finally comes together. All is revealed. I actually sat back and did a “Woah...holy fuck”. But it’s that end...oh that end. I don’t want to give any spoilers. I will just say that we discover some things about Carolyn...we discover many things about Carolyn actually. She is definitely not what she appeared to be in the beginning. We learn about Steven...yes he has a pretty impressive story. “Father” comes back...but doesn’t...but kinda does.