The Great Library of Tomorrow by Rosalia Aguilar Solace

Title: The Great Library of Tomorrow

Author: Rosalia Aguilar Solace

Genre: Fantasy

Publisher: Text Publishing

Published: 12^th November 2024

Format: Paperback

Pages: 448

Price: $38.00

Synopsis: Helia has served as the Sage of Hope for the Great Library of Tomorrow for centuries. She is one of the chosen few who embody and protect the values of humanity across the numerous realms of Paperworld, which are connected within the Library itself via magical Portals controlled by the Book of Wisdom.

But even her hope is tested when she and her partner Xavier, the Sage of Truth, are attacked while visiting the famous Rose Garden in the realm of Silvyra. Wounded and in shock amidst a storm of fire, they are confronted by a deadly figure known to them as the Ash Man. With the Garden destroyed and its dragon protector missing, Xavier sacrifices his life so that Helia can return home to warn the other Sages.

But there she finds the Book of Wisdom—always a guide to the Sages—eerily silent. With the Ash Man gaining strength, Helia soon finds herself in a race against time, searching for clues to the origins of their foe—and any possible way to defeat him.

Fuelled by the same collaborative heart and boundless imagination that dazzle millions of devoted Tomorrowland followers and festivalgoers every year, The Great Library of Tomorrow is perfect for fans of The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin and Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn.

~*~

Epic fantasy stories, especially ones that are the first in a duology, trilogy or series, are often richly complex, with a large cast of characters, luxurious descriptions of places and characters that evoke the setting in great detail, and intricate plots that can take time to build up, so the end of the first book can lead into the second book effectively. The Great Library of Tomorrow by Rosalia Aguilar Solace is one of these epic fantasy books that is full of plot, characters, and worldbuilding in the realm of Silvyra and The Great Library of Tomorrow.

Helia is one of the library’s sages – the Sage of Hope, and she has been for centuries alongside the other Sages: Xavier, the Sage of Truth, Veer, the Sage of Strength, Amin, the Sage of Loyalty, Mwamba, the Sage of Knowledge, Paix, the Sage of Joy, Robin the Sage of Love, and Edwin Payne, the Dark Sage, though Edwin, along with the Ash Man appears to be the instigator of an attack on Helia and Xavier at the Rose Garden. Xavier’s sacrifice so Helia can return to warn the rest of the sages, along with the disappearance of the garden’s dragon protector, Perennia, kick off the book, which then diverges into two parts: the story of the sages and Nu, who are fighting on one side to save the world and restore the Book of Wisdom. And the story of Arturo, who stumbles into a bookshop in New Mexico where he enters a book city and is recruited by Robin to write what has been Unwritten by Edwin and the Ash Man – but Arturo is just an ordinary man in an ordinary city – surely he can’t save the fate of the world of words from complete and utter destruction?

Robin and Mwamba guide Arturo as the other Sages fight in Silvyra – so there are two intertwining plots happening in this complex novel. Nu is with the other Sages and their Orbs – akin to the daemons in the His Dark Materials trilogy that communicate with their human or in this case sage counterpart, and are part of them. Though the Orbs are also very different to the daemons, because in this world, only Sages have these external manifestations of their souls. This brings a new dimension to the novel, especially when Nu begins to explore the new world she finds herself part of. Deep within the story is a battle and journey to find out where they are racing against a clock to find out where the foe has come from as well.

Because it went back and forth between Arturo, Robin and Mwamba in the bookshop, trying to write to save the world, and Helia and the other Sages in the library, things developed slowly. At first, it did feel like two separate stories, or perhaps two stories that were part of the same world and series, so they may have worked just as well separately as they did together. During my reading of this book, I felt that Helia and Arturo were the two main characters, and I found their stories, in particular Helia’s, the most interesting to follow. Because this is epic fantasy, the detail employed to tell the story and pull the reader in is something I expect from a book and series like this, and what I liked about this book was that it felt like a completed story, that the series has the potential to have an ongoing thread but also have each book be its own narrative in its own right.

The Great Library of Tomorrow is a complex beginning to what looks like it will be a complex series that explores a love of words and books, the magic they bring into our lives, and the threats that can face them. Whilst the threats might be magical in the series and this book, they appear to mirror real world threats that book banning, and censorship pose around the world. In celebrating words and what they can do, this series is examining how words create the world and make it what it is in all its complex magic. I found this to be an intriguing book with a promising premise that delivered on that and much more.