The Left-Handed Booksellers of London (edição: 2020)

A stand-alone urban fantasy/alternate history by the author of the Old Kingdom series.

It's the summer of 1983, and Susan Arkshaw has just turned 18 and been accepted by the Slade. Raised by her mother, she has never known her father, and knows very little about him. She decides to come to London for the summer to try and track him down; her best lead is to meet her 'Uncle' Frank... Except 'Uncle' Frank turns out to be a Sipper, and a crime lord and gets assassinated by one of the Left-Handed Booksellers the first evening she is there.

It was an uneven read - the first part of the book felt like vaguely connected episodes rather than a coherent story, but it started flowing better further on as more of the world-building fell into place. It was interesting for me because I lived in London a couple of years earlier and recognised the description of a certain bookshop.

As to why it's an alternate history? Because it's Raelene not Ray that drives a Ford Capri, and has a boss called Georgina. The bubble perm is presumably the same though ;)

Amusing and light.

This novel has an excellent premise, but I felt that it missed the mark a little bit. Drawing on traditional English folklore in the same style as Dianna Wynne Jones and Susan Cooper, author Garth Nix takes us on an adventure through London and the English countryside alongside protagonist Susan Arkshaw as she begins a quest to find out who she is and runs into a few complications along the way. Upon her first stop on her journey (with a mysterious Uncle Frank) she is unwittingly thrown into the midst of an alternate magical world, populated by the greater and lesser beings of magical influence in England and the Booksellers, an extended family meant to keep these beings in bounds. The lore of the Booksellers is intrinsically interesting, but I felt like Nix didn’t quite get into them nearly enough and almost overplayed his cards at once. Do we need to differentiate between the two branches of the family, or can we just have magically endowed booksellers? The nature of Susan and her two main bookseller companion’s adventure also smacks of an expected mystery plotline and feels far too much like a slightly more grown-up version of the previous books that are steeped in English folklore which do it perfectly. Overall, the story was still a fun read, but I found myself wanting the story to get on with it a bit more than I like and that jarred me from getting fully invested throughout. ( )

https://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2021/02/2021019-left-handed-booksellers-of.html ( )

Oh my, but this is a lush and convoluted pseudo-modern (set in an alternate 1983 London) fantasy. Rich in details, world-building, and fabulous characters, it is very much the strong story I have come to expect from Nix. Particularly recommended for adults who grew up reading/loving Susan Cooper’s The Dark is Rising series, and/or Diana Wynne Jones’ darker fantasies.

I was particularly delighted by one scene, when our protagonist offers to take a sword as weapon, and it turns out that they do actually have a reason for knowing how to use it other than just being the protagonist. ( )

Alternative London in 1983 and 18-year-old Susan is looking for the father she has never known before she starts art college in the autumn. Tracking down an old contact of her mother's, she unwittingly stumbles into a crime scene and is drawn into a strange London of dark magic where is appears that she is the target of some dark forces at work. Can the left-handed (and the right-handed) booksellers help her? ( )