Staff Pick - Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines

Libriomancer: magic ex libris, book one. (M) I stumbled upon this very fun title by author Jim C. Hines when I was directed to his pictorial parody of women and fantasy book covers.

Librarian Isaac Vainio is a libriomancer, a person with the magical ability to draw items out of books.  Need a phaser? Just reach into a Star Trek novel. Need a cloak of invisibility? Just reach into Harry Potter. But of course there are rules. The item has to fit through the book. Some books are locked for our protection. Objects need to be returned. The books have to be popular, and so on...  And pesky authors keep creating new monsters and alien technology.

As a rookie libriomancer, Issac was taken out field duty by his superiors for being too reckless with his magic. He is now relegated to cataloguing books for other libriomancers.  When all heck breaks loose among the vampires in town, Issac is forced back into service, dragging his personal library with him to do battle against unknown adversaries.

The story is chock full of references to classic and genre literature, nicely paced with lots of action and a dash of romance. I had a great time reading this novel. I am now anxiously awaiting for more exploits by Issac, his dryad lover Lena and Smudge, his illegal fire spider.

Jim has the first chapter available on his website.