The Absolute Book

November 2, 2020
This sprawling and engrossing epic from Knox (Mortal Fire) opens with intimate tragedy and expands until the fates of several worlds hang in the balance. When Taryn Cornick’s sister, Beatrice, is killed, Taryn wants revenge, and over the 14 years that follow, she progresses from detached teen, then listless wife, to celebrated author. Her debut work of “musing nonfiction” discusses dangers to libraries, and its international acclaim wins Taryn both allies and enemies. As questions emerge about a fire in her grandparents’ library—which housed an ancient, mystical scroll—and Taryn’s involvement in a murder case, Taryn is drawn into a centuries-old conflict between demons and the sidhe. The story expands like inverse nesting dolls, beginning as a slow-burn thriller and gradually revealing itself as epic fantasy, even as it retains its core of real-world suspense. Bookish and withdrawn, Taryn is an unexpected chosen one and resists many of the standard heroic tropes. Knox bites off a bit more than she can chew, though, and several questions are left unanswered, but readers will still be impressed by the work’s sweeping scope. This ambitious fantasy is a master class in blending genres. Agent: Scott Miller, Trident Media.

November 15, 2020
A tale of hidden secrets, hidden worlds, and the price we pay for our hidden desires. Taryn Cornick's sister, Beatrice, was killed in a random attack when Taryn was 19. When the murderer turns up dead, the police question Taryn, mainly as a formality--though young detective Jacob Berger remains convinced she had something to do with it. Years later, after having written a book about all kinds of threats to books and libraries--bears, mold, silverfish, budget cuts--Taryn starts losing time. Someone or something else seems to be speaking through her, asking about a fire in her grandparents' library and something that came through the fire undamaged, an "ancient scroll box known as 'the Firestarter, ' " which has supposedly "survived no fewer than five fires in famous libraries." And then, on her way to visit a French library, Taryn is attacked, and she, Jacob Berger, and a strange young man all fall through a doorway into another world. All these threads--Taryn's loss, her desire for revenge, her complicity in murder, and the mysterious box that can't be burned--are drawn together slowly and carefully over the course of this densely woven novel. Elements that might strain credulity in a lesser writer's hands here read like simple facts. In particular, Knox has created a faerie realm that's seductively tactile. The ending is a little too neat and solves a problem that's at best tangential to the main plot, but overall the book is such a rich feast that it's well worth reading. This darkly luminous fantasy reads like a mystery, thoroughly and wonderfully transporting readers to another world.

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February 1, 2021
On the surface, The Absolute Book is a contemporary quest fantasy mixed with a conspiracy thriller, as multiple characters hunt for a legendary scroll box known as the Firestarter, which has the uncanny ability to survive the burning of every library in which it is housed. This search ranges from England to New Zealand and through magical Gates to other worlds, from fairyland to purgatory. Taryn, author of a popular academic book about the multiple threats to libraries (including their flammability), has a connection to the scroll box through the library of her grandparents' home--which, yes, burned. Taryn becomes key to the search through a labyrinthine series of events, which starts with the murder of her sister, followed by the murder of her sister's murderer. Also involved in the kaleidoscopic swirl around Taryn: an obsessive cop, a killer-for-hire, a fey made of stories, several demons, two talking ravens, and more. Knox's restrained, poetic writing works well with this ever-spiraling, mind-blowing optical illusion of a novel, which marries myths and lore from Celtic, Norse, and Judeo-Christian traditions with a variety of literary references. Weird and enigmatic, occasionally slow but never dull, this grand ode to Story itself is one that begs for a reread.

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