Pen and paper went into the hidden pockets of her muddled, many-tiered skirts. All of them went into a bag that Claire slung across her chest.

The mundane tools of a librarian’s trade included notebooks and writing implements, and the less usual inks that glimmered, stamps that bit, wriggling wax, and twine. The worldbuilding is marvellous, the action sharply written, and the plot fits together as neatly as an expertly shelved set of books. What glorious fun they have! Hackwith takes the premise and just runs with it, having an absolutely splendid time along the way.

Oh, and there’s a fallen angel on the hunt for a book which shouldn’t exist. Then just as they’re chasing a hero (who decides he quite likes being called Hero), a junior demon turns up and is promptly dragged back to Earth to go hunting for Hero and his book. And they’re in the underworld, so nothing is ever straightforward. Should it?Įxcept that some of the characters tend to escape from time to time, and it’s Claire’s job, along with her apprentice Brevity (ex-Muse) to keep things in order. Her job is look after all the unwritten books. In short, there’s a library in Hell, looked after by Claire, the Head Librarian. But what should have been a simple retrieval goes horrifyingly wrong, in a chase that threatens to reshape the boundaries between Heaven, Hell… and Earth. When a Hero escapes from his book and goes in search of his author, Claire must track and capture him with the help of former muse and current assistant Brevity and nervous demon courier Leto. Along with repairing and organizing books, her job consists of keeping an eye on restless stories whose characters risk materialising and escaping the library. Every book left unfinished by its author is filed away in the Unwritten Wing, a neutral space in Hell presided over by Claire, its head librarian.

The library of the unwritten