The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

 Author: Garth Nix

Read by: Marissa Calin

ISBN: 9780655698142

Hi Everyone,

I don't even how to being explaining the journey I took within these pages. I feel like the writer (Garth Nix) had so many ideas that just had to be put on paper and he bundled them all up and scattered them though out The Left Handed Booksellers of London. It went from one concept to next and I had to constantly try to keep up with all the new ideas.  

But...

I really enjoyed it.

I liked the journey through the reality of London on one page, to a fantasy world on the next, and back to London.  I didn't find a lot of significance in the importance of the left handed and right handed concept of the novel but it did bring the magical presence into being within the plot.  Rather instead, I enjoyed the mystery behind Susan's father and the link to her mother (of whom I would liked to have been developed more rather than the dusting of knowledge we are given about her). Who was her father? Where was her father? And what did this all have to do with everything and everyone? Yes - that's what kept me reading. Splatter in the magical elements of the characters and you have quite a good read.

Even though I found there were a lot of ideas floating within the pages, it pleasantly enjoyable.  It's quite good to walk the pages of a novel with the characters, and have no expectancy rather than relaxing and enjoying the story.  This was one those books for me.  There was just enough crime, mystery, fantasy, joy, heartbreak and reality, to balance the ideas nicely.  

Description:

A Slightly alternate London in 1983, Susan Arkshaw is looking for her father, a man she has never met. Crime boss Frank Thringley might be able to help her, but Susan doesn't get time to ask Frank any questions before he is turned to dust by the prick of a silver hatpin in the hands of the outrageously attractive Merlin.

Merlin is a young left-handed bookseller (one of the fighting ones), who with the right-handed booksellers magical beings who police the mythic and legendary Old World when it intrudes on the modern world, in addition to running several bookshops.

Susan's search for her father begins with her mother's possibly misremembered or misspelt surnames, a reading room ticket, and a silver cigarette case engraved with something that might be a coat of arms.

Merlin has a request of his own, to find the Old World entity who used ordinary criminals to kill his mother. As he and his sister, the right-handed bookseller Vivien, tread in the path of a botched or covered-up police investigation from years past, they find this quest strangely overlaps with Susan's. Who or what was her father? Susan, Merlin and Vivien must find out, as the Old World erupts dangerously into the New.

Happy Reading