ARc Review – The Dark Archive

From Goodreads:

A mysterious archive. A powerful enemy. And a cunning plan.

Danger is part of the day job for a Librarian spy. So Irene’s hoping for a relaxing weekend. However, her jaunt to Guernsey proves no such thing. Instead of retrieving a rare book, she’s almost assassinated, Kai is poisoned and Vale barely escapes with his life. Then the attacks continue in London – targeting those connected with the Fae-dragon peace treaty.

Irene knows she must stop the plot before the treaty fails. Or someone dies. But when Irene and friends are trapped underground, in a secret archive, things don’t look so good. Then an old enemy demands vengeance, and a shocking secret is revealed. Can Irene really seize victory from chaos?

The Dark Archive is the seventh book in the Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman

I have made no secret how much I love this series. It is a book lover’s dream with all its nods and winks to various genres and tropes. This instalment keeps all the excitement and mystery of the previous books. I liked how much this one focused on Irene and her new apprentice. While I love Kai and Vale, it was nice to return to a story focused primarily on Irene. We are still learning so much about her which is really interesting.

We are also still getting an epic amount of worldbuilding that is fascinating in every way. This one takes us into a more technological based world and how that works with the order and chaos elements of the universe. We got some old enemies coming back to haunt Irene with a fantastic mystery and a good few plot twists and reveals that I really didn’t see coming. The only thing I wish we got was more of the Library itself. It is what I have wished for every book in the series that we get to spend more time in the Library and unfortunately we haven’t got that yet. But oh the Epilogue set up so much intrigue that I think I am going to get my wish in book 8!

Kai’s subplot was also really interesting and while we didn’t get much of a conclusion there I think it has set up some really interesting dynamics especially getting to see more of his family relationships. The romance is played down a lot in this one. We have got to a secure and comfortable stage of the relationship and I really like that it could take a back seat to the action but you still felt the love between the characters.

I have to say I don’t think you could jump into this one as a standalone. There is a lot of previous relationships between Irene and Kai, The world building and Irene’s history with the various villains is all established in previous books. But I really think if you haven’t read this series you should really start it. It is still so strong, entertaining and has new twists and turns even after 7 books. It jam packed with book magic, love of words and language and all those little nods to fantasy sci-fi, mystery and spy novels. It will leave any book worm smiling.