The Destruction of the Books

The Destruction of the Books, by Mel Odom is the sequel to The Rover and continues many years later, when Wick is now the Grandmagister of the Library. This novel focuses mainly on First Librarian Juhg, also a hobbit-like dweller. But unlike Wick, Juhg spent many years of his young life as a slave in the goblin mines. Rescued by the Grandmagister on one of his adventures, Juhg now spends most of his time divided between his duties in the Library and adventures of his own, tracking down rogue books. After rescuing a book from the hands of a dangerous wizard aboard a goblin ship, Juhg returns to Wick and the Vault of All Known Knowledge. But unbeknownst to them, the book is a trap. And I actually enjoyed the character of Juhg even more than Wick from the first novel. Juhg has a dark past and isn't as naive as the young Wick was in The Rover. While the story unfolds a little slower at the beginning of the book, danger and excitement soon envelop Juhg. I'm looking forward to the next in the series, Lord of the Libraries, which ties up the cliffhanger ending.

The Destruction of the Books takes place many years after the Rover, with Wick as a supporting character. Mel puts Juhg, Wick's apprentice as the main character, with a rich supporting cast. Wick is a Dweller from the Island of Greydawn Moors, where the Dwellers are kept safe, along with the Vault of All Known Knowledge. Jugh was a slave in the Goblin's mines on the mainland. Since this book is told through Juhg's eyes, the world is a very different place. The Rover was quite a bit more light hearted, the story her is more dark and foreboding. Mel's story telling is top form, his world he has created is told in rich, broad strokes, filling in the details necessary to the story, but leaving much of it to the reader's imagination. An important note is that Mel has intentionally left off a map of this world. he wants you to use your imagination. The Rover was young adults book. The Destruction of the Books is more mature. It deals with many issues that are darker and grimmer. The sociological points brought up in the story are well thought out and surprised me at the depth they impact the world and its history. There is less action in this book as opposed to the Rover, but it is important to set up for the next book, Lord of the Libraries. I enjoyed the book. It had a good balance of all the parts, good flow, and as always with Mel's books, great characters.

In this sequel to The Rover, Mel Odom takes us back to his world of elves, dwarves, wizards and (hobbit-like) dwellers. First-level librarian Juhg learns that a goblin ship will be sneaking into Kelloch's Harbor, carrying a book. Goblins aren't known for their love of books, so why is this ship carrying one? And so, Juhg and the crew of the pirate ship Windchaser setout to capture the book. But, there's more to the mystery of this book than meets the eye. Someone has set a trap, a trap in the shape of a book, and this trap can have dire consequences for the whole world! Overall, I found this to be a very good book. Admittedly, it seems to be the first part of a series, and as such has a very unsatisfying ending. But, that said, I loved the action and adventure angle of the book. I loved the dwarves and their fighting styles, the pirates, the wizards, and the magic. Also, what I liked about The Rover was its setting - where most fantasy books focus on a climactic battle between Good and Evil, that book is set in a world where that battle occurred hundreds of years earlier, and the world is left in a dark ages. In The Destruction of the Books, we begin to find that the Dark Lord's plans went deeper than simple world conquest, and that his plans are bearing fruit all this time later. Yes, I really enjoyed this book, and can't wait to read the next one. If you like good Tolkienesque fantasy, then this book is for you. I loved the book, and highly recommend it!

I have been waiting to read Mel Odom's sequel to "The Rover" for a long time, which brought an element of trepidation to finally having "The Destruction of the Books" in my hand. At last I would be able to find out what happened next with Edgewick Lamplighter, Third Level Librarian at the Vault of All Known Knowledge, and read about his next encounter with the Embyr, the fascinating flaming female that Wick encountered while out and about with a band of Dwarf pirates. However, as I started reading this book I found that I was not reading about Wick, the Third Level Librarian, but another dweller named Juhg, a First Level Librarian, who is aboard the "Windchaser" in Kelloch's Harbor. Wick, it turns out, is now the Grandmagister. Things have certainly changed at Greydawn Moors. In other words, what happens in "The Destruction of the Books" is nothing like what I expected or wanted to read. I recalled the same sense of disappointment at had at the beginning of "The Fellowship of the Ring" when suddenly Bilbo was replaced by Frodo. However, there is a more important similarity to that experience in that I liked "The Destruction of the Books" more than I liked "The Rover." It seems to me that Odom has built upon the elements presented in that first novel to develop a much more compelling world and a decidedly less predictable narrative. This is a world that was shattered long ago by the great Cataclysm in which Lord Kharrion's forces of evil were defeated by an alliance of men, dwarves, and elves. The Vault of All Known Knowledge is the great depository of all the books that were preserved or discovered after the Catacylsm, for Kharrion's collection of Dark Riders, Grymmlings, Boneblights, and assorted goblinkin made a point of destroying all backs. That is why the rumor that there is a book aboard a goblin ship puts Juhg in a position where he has to try and retrieve the volume. There must be something very special about a book that the goblinkin have not destroyed. Juhg was rescued by Wick in "The Rover" from the goblin mines, and while he respects the Grandmagister above all others, he does not share Wick's vision for the world. Perhaps what most impressed me about this novel was that the most memorable sequence was not the adventures on the Blood-Soaked Sea or the battles at Greydawn Moors, but an argument that Juhg has with Craugh the wizard in which the dweller questions some of the basic assumptions of the world in which they live. The debate forces not only the wizard but also the reader to rethink what we know about Wick's world. Things are not turned upside down, but they certainly get a whole lot more interesting in this book. The claim will be sounded once again that Odom is providing a pastiche of Tolkien in this series. Given that we are talking about a world inhabited by wizards, dwarves, elves, dragons, and goblins, while focusing on creatures half the size of humans, those comparisons are inevitable. But there is enough

Dweller hero, Jugh, is apprentice librarian to the Grandmagister of the Great Library, Edgewick the Lamplighter. However, Juhg finds his work tedious and ennui is a prob;em for him as working inside the Vault of All Known Knowledge is boring for an adventurous ROVER like him though he admits to himself that his mentor the grand Wick seems contented in his role. Juhg goes on a sea voyage when he hears rumors of a book in the possession of Goblins, a race that would never possess anything written except to use as fuel. He decides to take the tome from the goblins and Juhg succeeds. He brings the book to his learned Grandmagister, but when Edgewick and the wizard Craugh inspect it they open a magical portal that enables Dread Riders, Blazebulls, and Grymmlings, to enter their realm. Juhg, Edgewick, and Craugh battle the book's evil spell, but destroy much of their library and even if they succeed they have just started the quest because they will need to trace back to the source who might be a powerful malevolent Goblin Wizard Aldhran. This is an engaging epic fantasy that reaches out to a wide range of readers with its amusing often ironic humor (especially satirizing Mel Odom's own works). The story line is action-packed with many of the typical genre elements, but also contains characters that seem real so that Mr. Odom's various species appear as genuine. Set in the same universe of his previous works (like ROVER); Mr. Odom provides a terrific opening gamut of a series that will please the young teen crowd as well as aging boomers. Harriet Klausner