Unbound

Locations
Call Number: Fantasy / Hines, Jim
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Hines, Jim	4-week checkout	On Shelf

"For five hundred years, the Porters have concealed the existence of magic from the world. Now, old enemies have revealed the Porters' secrets, and an even greater threat lurks in the shadows. The would-be queen Meridiana, banished for a thousand years, has returned in the body of a girl named Jeneta Aboderin. She seeks an artifact created by Pope Sylvester II, a bronze prison that would grant her the power to command an army of the dead. Michigan librarian Isaac Vainio is powerless to stop her, having been stripped of his power and his place among the Porters by Johannes Gutenberg himself. But Isaac is determined to regain his magic and to rescue his former student Jeneta. With no magic of his own, Isaac must delve into the darker side of black-market magic, where he will confront beings better left undisturbed, including the sorcerer Juan Ponce de Leon. With his loyal fire-spider Smudge, dryad warrior Lena Greenwood, and psychiatrist Nidhi Shah, Isaac races to unravel a mystery more than a thousand years old as competing magical powers battle to shape the future of the world. He will be hunted by enemies and former allies alike, and it will take all his knowledge and resourcefulness to survive as magical war threatens to spread across the globe. Isaac's choices will determine the fate of his friends, the Porters, the students of Bi Sheng, and the world. Only one thing is certain: even if he finds a way to restore his magic, he can't save them all...."--Publisher's website.

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COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Glorious read submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on June 22, 2015, 6:46am Ahhhhhh. Like sinking into a warm bath, if your warm bath was full of sexy dryads, magical fire spiders, 500 year old magicians, and possessed teenagers flanked by living Gorgons.

Start with the first in the series (_Codex Born_), but I highly, highly recommend these. The premise is that magic is real, and a few people can access it. That when enough people read books, their communal shared belief in the story creates a reality that these handful of magicians can use to reach into the books and pull items out of. Want a Sonic Screwdriver from Dr. Who? A tricorder from Star Trek? But be careful, you might get bitten by a vampire and become one.

There is power to be had and forces are fighting for control. The characters are fully fleshed, with strengths, weaknesses, charm, flaws, and all the humanness (or... dryad-ness?) that makes reading them feel like you know them. They respond to the events of the story in ways that shape them, and they shape events in turn.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

And I wonder if I could get a fire spider for a pet...?