1920 mystery with very mild fantasy elements. Sylvia Ashe lost her job
as a journalist when all the men came back from the War, but stumbles
into a job with a magical library.
Which you'd think would be a portal to wonder and excitement, but
this book is weirdly flat. Much of it is clearly set-up for the series
(Archer is using an existing world, and the constant references to
people elsewhere who are clearly doing more exciting things get
wearing at times); there are several mysteries introduced here, but
only one of them has any sense of urgency and of course that's the
only one that gets resolved in this book. The stakes are very low and
there's barely a whiff of what seems like potentially an interesting
magic system.
Sylvia and cryptic war-hero Gabe fall in insta-love, but in this book
at least he's engaged to someone else (not to mention vastly above her
station) and they are both being good. I'm sure it won't last, but I
suppose it's pleasant to see something a bit more grown-up than
leaping straight into bed.
The book also suffers from the usual problems of an American writing
England, an "off" feeling and phrases used just slightly wrongly to
this native speaker of British English.
I'll probably try some earlier books in the world to see if they feel
like less of a side-story, and like less deliberately stretching out
the long-term plot to cover a (checks) six-book series.