Bookburners continues to be an enjoyable read. The characters twist and turn and grow and reveal new secrets, Grace's change of reading matter had me braced for something having gone occultishly haywire with her, and the nod to Paul Cornell's Shadow Police series in the last episode made me laugh (that team and the Vatican crew would be one heckuva crossover)

I'm a little wary of multi-author narratives in print, which is a little goofy, considering that this is basically how all television is scripted. I love me some television, but, of course, it must be said that the strength of the singular vision -- the showrunner or creator -- is a huge factor in whether any given show is successful. (Successful to me, anyway; I'm not talking folding green. That's a whole other thing.) But I've been burned with uneven and unsatisfying multi-author novels before, so. I picked this is up because I've been slow-burning my way through Max Gladstone's Craft sequence. Maybe his name is top of the marquee because he's the best known of the writers, but I suspect not. This has his fingermarks on it, narratively speaking -- from the baroque murder mystery plotting to the strange other gods and devils.

But even if Gladstone wasn't the showrunner, if you will, whoever it was did an excellent job. I greatly enjoyed Bookburners, even despite my prejudice.. I felt like it overcame the lumpiness of multi-author novels I've read through what must have been good editorial control, which nevertheless allowed the individual writers to show off their specific style. Each section is episodic like television, with a mini-arc that has its own satisfaction. Sometimes the episodes were more mythology heavy, and that's fun too. The possibilities of the premise are no where near exhausted by the end, which is also a plus, given how many television shows / series / trilogies / whatever should be strangled after the first outing. How many Matrix movies are there, for example? Want to talk about season 2 of Heroes? or Lost?

Anyway, much fun was had by me.

This is a serial book - that is, 16 episodes strung together like a season of TV shows, each episode written by one of the 4 authors.  One of the reasons I picked it up was because I had read one of Max Gladstone's Craft Sequence novels and enjoyed it. 

Anyway, it appears that I'm not really a huge fan of the serial experience.  It's not my preferred style of book.  I just find it tends to go on for too long, maybe.  Or maybe it's the pacing that I'm not fond of.  I'm not bright enough to figure out the reasons.  *LOL*

But also, I'm not a fan of urban horror fantasy.  I mean, I like the premise.  I like the characters for the most part but it's the horror part that's not my favourite.  I'll read them and if the the characters are captivating and the plot intriguing, I can usually deal with the actual horror parts - like the intense descriptions of monsters and dungeons and lairs and the like. 

So, after that caveat, Bookburners was a good read for the most part.  The 4 different author styles weren't jarring, as a matter of fact they were all rather similar and I'm not familiar enough with them to know if it was worked towards in this project or just something that they all have in common.  The main character, Sal, I couldn't quite enjoy until about 2/3rds of the way through the book.  I just didn't like her very much.  I was fascinated by the other members of her team though. 

Will I read the next seasons of Bookburners?  Maybe.  If they come up on sale at some point.  I enjoyed this one enough to be curious about where they go next with the story. 

Review for Bookburners # 1.1-1.4/1.16

I could push myself to read the rest of this but I don't really feel like it. Superficially it's fine, and it sounded interesting but I have no real urge to continue. I guess the serial format just doesn't work for me in this case. Sal (a cop) gets recruited by a group from the Vatican that deals with magic books when her brother gets taken over by a dangerous magical book. It sounded neat but I'm finding that I just don't care. Maybe I'll pick it up again, maybe I won't, but I'm sure someone on the library's waitlist really wants to read it.

I was reading this for Free Friday #3 for booklikes-opoly and I got 210 pages into the 789 page book, so I'm adding $6 to my bank.

New Total: $184

An original and entertaining urban-fantasy series combined into one volume. The characters each have a unique and well rounded personality with several unusual quirks. The story telling is engaging, fun and nail-biting as required. This novel serialization should be be made into a TV series.