I fell in love with A.J. Hackwith’s writing style upon reading The Library of the Unwritten and The Archive of the Forgotten did not disappoint. There’s something so precious about this world, about the characters and setting and conflicts, that makes this feel like a comfort read on so many levels.

Who doesn’t like a story set in a library? It automatically makes us feel some way, right? Now picture that library is in Hell, that there are other similar libraries across time and worlds and that we get to experience all these individual spaces. Absolutely magical. The very meaning of the Hell’s Library – The Library of the Unwritten, of stories that don’t come to fruition, that their authors move on from, or that their authors cannot finish – gives it a sense of melancholy and longing that will never be appeased.

These characters are something else too. Claire, stoic and professional though broken inside, unable to stand how cruel she has been and what she has done. Brevity, ex-muse faced with the sudden promotion to Librarian of the Unwritten Wing, still trying to come to terms with the loss brought on my the attack. Hero and Rami, torn between these two as they too work out who they are now and what their place is. The found-family dynamic breaks my heart in the best way possible and the maturity and flaws within these characters make it even more gut-wrenching when they decide to do things like sacrifice themselves for one another.

I caught on rather early to the conflicts and what would happen at the end, a mixture of blunt characterisations and those flaws I mentioned earlier. It didn’t make this any less interesting of a read. It didn’t hinder the depths I found myself relating to these characters or the intrigue of such themes centred around the action and discourse. I didn’t feel rushed to get through it, but it wasn’t a slow read – I found myself wanting to take the time to read it, to digest what the characters were thinking and doing and really dig into the meat of the story.

A.J. Hackwith has a gorgeous writing style and I implore you all to give her books a go. You may be surprised by how enticing they are, by how you’re submitting to the power of such simple yet enchanting storytelling.