With The God of Lost Words, A.J. Hackwith’s wonderful trilogy about Claire, her friends, and Hell’s library comes to a close. I’m a little sad about it, but this closing volume is a beautiful, magical send-off. Readers will definitely want to read the first two books in the series, because this one starts with the cast in the thick of plots kicked off in the earlier volumes. I kind of envy those readers. They don’t have to wait a year between each part of the series; they can swallow the trilogy whole.
In the first volume of the series, we meet Claire, the librarian of the Unwritten Wing of a massive supernatural series of libraries that collect all kinds of unpublished and unrecorded stories. For centuries, the Unwritten Wing has been tucked away in a corner of Hell. The status quo was disturbed when an exiled demon made a move to take over the library, setting off all kinds of infernal schemes that took Claire out of the Library and into different versions of the afterlife, introduced her to all sorts of amazing characters, and made her question if there is something greater to fight for than a comfortable existence in a cozy library with an endless supply of tea. (Although, how awesome would that be?)
The most important thing that Claire has discovered is the power—the real power of stories—and the thing that has caused all the fuss in the first place as various entities have scrambled for control of the library. This is what I loved most about The God of Lost Words, and the Hell’s Library series. I am a firm believer in stories. I think they are how we interpret everything, how we understand each other, and how we learn who we are. Stories are how the lost angel Remi learns to free himself of past ties and how the newly freed Hero discovers that he’s worthy of love. I feel myself starting to gush, but that’s how much I loved this conclusion to the Hell’s Library series.
If you love stories as much as I do, I strongly recommend this series. I hope that it warms your bookish soul the way it warmed mine.
A Bookish Type 