What happens when a god kidnaps twelve children and mercilessly trains them to be the librarians of his extensive collection of all human (probably human, anyway) knowledge? Murderous, violent, mind-bending hilarity ensues. His adopted children, these dangerously wayward librarians, set out to solve the mystery of his disappearance and in doing so leave behind them a trail of blood, tears, and dead people.* There's Carolyn, the librarian of languages, who has a secret so deeply buried that her fingers twitch at the non-thought of it. Michael, student of all the animals, even the small ones. David, the ruthless killer and master of warfare. Jennifer, the healer, and Margaret, who spends most of her time on the other side with dead people. And the ones who weren't part of the family: Steve, the well-meaning miscreant, Erwin, the hardcore lawman, and ultimately the whole world, all embroiled in the aftermath of Father's disappearance.
This book was a rabbit hole; normality so closely interwoven with all-out weirdness that I found myself reading about tentacle monsters, barbequing children, and ultraviolence so thoughtfully written that I had to stop a few times and think about how I got there. The contrast of scale between touching scenes written almost lovingly about individual characters and grandiose cosmic revelations is astounding. Every word of it was outright amazing, and what blew me away the most was that this was this author's first novel. Holy cow!
*Don't worry, some of these dead people are only mostly dead and definitely capable of eating intruders or dusting books without too much oversight.
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