Ok. So. The Absolute Book. Well. Hmm. Here's the thing. The best way I can describe this is that it is literary Marmite. You are either going to love it or loathe it. I have landed on 'Love it' but I can still see that it is going to be divisive. This is a book that sets out to be epic in scope and takes in the entire landscape of human existence. Set in our world but more concerned with the goings on within another, The Absolute Book never slows down for a moment. Honestly, I'm still processing. It's the kind of book that for one moment is about grief, then about the life of the soul and then all of a sudden a crocodile bursts out of nowhere and then the action moves on to the next. But if you're prepared to strap in, it is a pretty fantastic ride.

Taryn Cornick grew up with her older sister Beatrice around their grandfather's library in his country home in Princes Gate, near the Welsh border. As children, they witnessed their grandfather's previously ordinary assistant start a fire there. Years later, Beatrice is murdered by a man who hits her with his car and then puts her in his boot. He claims it was an accident and that he panicked. He receives a light sentence. Frozen with grief for her sister, Taryn shuts down. She longs for revenge. Years later, she impulsively marries a rich man who she does not love. When she accompanies her husband on a trip to a hunting lodge, she meets a quiet outdoorsman known as the Muleskinner. One evening, Taryn unburdens her grief and anger to him as she never has to the man she married. The Muleskinner makes a tacit offer. Taryn does not say yes but crucially she does not say no. Shortly after his release, Beatrice's killer is found dead. DI Jacob Berger investigates, visiting Taryn in her home. He can find no evidence to link Taryn to the crime and yet ... he can see in her eyes that she had something to do with it.

Seven years later, Taryn is divorced and the newly-minted author of a book on the history of fires in libraries - it is an account of the written word under threat. With her book unexpectedly popular, she is doing the rounds at literary circuits when things take a turn for the strange. She becomes aware that she is losing time, she starts having seizures. She receives silent phone calls. A pair of Pakistani men who approached her at a book-signing have also been found dead near Princes Gate in an implausible murder-suicide. With Jacob Berger now working for MI5 and back on her tail again, Taryn is forced to confront certain long-buried memories, specifically about an object in her grandfather's library known as the Firestarter, a scroll box which is rumoured to have survived several library fires. With both Jacob and Taryn seeking answers, they then encounter Shift, a mysterious young man who opens the door to a whole other world.

The fantasy world of The Absolute Book plays tribute to a whole host of literary classics, works of ancient mythology and even modern crime capers from the Arthurian legends all the way up to The Da Vinci Code. Taryn, Berger and Shift slip between different realities, encountering talking ravens, demons, fairies and the Taken. But as with all the most well-crafted fantasies, it holds up a mirror to our own world. In one world, we worry about bot farms, Russia and the state of the environment. In another, they are arguing over the Tithe and what to do with the souls of the Taken. These are the human souls snatched by the sidhe (fairies) but every two hundred years, Hell requires a tribute to allow the sidhe their continued peaceful dominion.

There is a lot going on here. Too much to adequately explain in a review, even for someone as ready to go off on tangents as I am. What I enjoyed was how The Absolute Book was such a fantastic blend of mythology and commercial fantasy. On the one hand, we have a perfect fairytale about how a young Shift escaped a forest fire thousands of years ago. Then we have a side-splitting set-piece as Taryn's actor father Basil Cornick explains his puzzling recent experience. He was made famous by a trilogy of fantasy movies shot in New Zealand by a director with the first name Peter. More recently though, he is invited to a screen test where he is asked to try out as Odin. While some of the circumstances are unusual, Basil has to admit that animatronics and CGI effects are better than anything he has ever seen before. Taryn and the reader realise what is really going on. The demons and talking ravens are real. The sidhe have hoodwinked Basil so that he will talk to the emissaries from Hell on their behalf to find out more about the Firestarter.

Learning more about the rules of the other worlds, Taryn realises that her fateful agreement with the Muleskinner has damned her own soul. She has worked hard to deny her own guilt to all around her but there is no hiding the truth from the sidhe. Another of my favourite moments however comes when her own father discovers the truth. He asks her if she really did it and when she admits, his response is, 'Good for you'. Despite all the celestial and infernal shenanigans, Knox is more than anything concerned with the evils here on earth. One character calls Taryn in tears because her Polish husband has been denied UK residency. On her lecture tour, Taryn points out that library closures are another form of knowledge destruction - the written word under threat. Stuck in hospital, Jacob sees on the news that a building is on fire but the nurse tells him that those responsible are not terrorists, but rather Tories.

There are murmurings about Brexit, which is never named directly. Jacob 'recalled how, a year earlier, the very erudite lawyer he regularly had a drink with had explained to him why the coming referendum wasn’t going to devolve into the usual political point-scoring but instead produce something extraordinary. And it’s not just Murdoch and immigrants and implied promises about what might be done to save the NHS by the very people dismantling it. It’s not just memories of busy shipyards and Granddad’s self-respect. No, it’s an almost mythical yearning, as if, if only we can create the right conditions, a stranger might come out of the mist, thrust a sword into a stone, and say ‘Whosoever draws forth this blade ...' They are yearning for the land of the sidhe but they are forgetting the Tithe. King Arthur is not coming.

Mankind's headlong rush for self-destruction is seen through the novel. As Taryn meets the Taken, they 'sang a bit, and then tried to get Taryn to tell them, in her poor French, how the world fared. Was it possible yet to be poor and live decently? Were young men still sent to die in wars made by old men? Were the meek still waiting to inherit the Earth, as scripture promised, through generations of them were already under the ground, and a grave isn't an inheritance? Not really, Taryn said of the first. Yes, of course, of the second. And of the third, no. It's not like that. ' These souls are the ghosts of French soldiers lost in the trenches in World War One. Their time with the sidhe will be short.

With angels and demons at war, The Absolute Book is a morality tale. We must consider whether Shift is heroic given the compromises he has had to make along the way and the chaos he has left in his wake. One of the things I liked about the novel is that no attempt was made to find Taryn a love interest. Instead we see her continuing grieving process. She must consider how far her rage at her sister's death has taken her from her moral centre and what she will need to do to atone. And yet. I am still with her father on this one.

The Absolute Book is rather over-stuffed. The conclusion was very beautiful but felt jarring, coming out of a fantasy which blended all too well with reality and instead tumbling into somewhere more akin to a fairyland. Yet if this is a novel that shoots for the moon and falls short, I think it has still landed among the stars. I have a strong urge to buy copies of this book for my loved ones to try and get someone else's opinion. But then I also feel apprehensive because it is such a rollercoaster. It is certainly not a 'safe' book for gifting. Most likely I will end up re-reading and reflecting. But despite the occasional points where the pacing sags ad its unwieldy themes, this remains a book of true beauty. Its savage reinterpretation of folklore and fairytale reminded me of The Owl Service, another book I am long overdue to revisit. But the quotation that most sticks in my mind is Taryn's response to the question of whether books have souls:

"I think we should act as if we have souls," Taryn said. "Immortal souls we might imperil by cruelty or bad faith or a serious lack of charity. And if imagining that books have souls helps us believe we do, then books absolutely have souls."

I love how this allows room for those who have faith as well as those who have none. It recognises reading as something magical in itself and that it is an act of empathy and part of what makes us human. The Absolute Book celebrates everything that reading can and should be and for that alone it deserves to be hailed as a masterpiece.

I tried with this book multiple times and on passport or sounds like a match made in heaven for my taste. But much as I tried, I found it overwritten, dense (not in a good way) and muddled. The mess of mythologies lacked cohesion, with bits haphazardly cherry picked and combined in a way that didn't have any obvious meaning. I never managed to finish it.

Unfortunately I cannot get into this book, so have to DNF. I think people will either absolutely love it or not.

DNF at 35%

This book is so infuriating. I tried my best to get through it, even starting it three times to try and reacquaint myself after putting it down for a while. But the thing is that it's impossible to acquaint yourself with in the first place.

I was so excited to read this book when I got approved. The premise sounded so exciting. The thing is that the story is actually interesting. A murder, a missing book, a fae realm. But the writing makes it absolutely impossible to read. Knox jumps around all over the place, characters are inconsistent, scene changes seem out of place, and things are left unexplained. For a book that's over 600 pages long, you'd think that there would be plenty of space to actually explain things, and you'd be wrong.

Knox loves to just jump ahead, cutting out a huge portion of the story and never explaining anything that happened in the gap. One instance of this is the main charcter spending time in the fae realm and coming out suddenly knowing a lot about what is going on. This time is just completely skipped and the reader is left in the dark about her time there. Considering that she's the main character, you think the Knox would have wanted to take the reader along with her exploration of a new world, not just take us there breifly and then dump us into a much later part of the story. Another instance of these jumps is two characters that have met twice, they don't seem to get on during these first two encounters, suddenly working together, seeming to know each other really well, and have a huge plan. All of this happens off page, none of it was explained. When did they meet? What did they discuss? How did they actually get to this stage? Maybe it's explained further into the book but I don't want to read on to find out. However, with the amount that was left out in the part that I did read, you'd almost need another book to fill them all in.

I tried so hard to keep reading because I would like to know what happened to the fire starter, the details of the murder, how they fight the deamons. But it's just not worth reading through all the other stuff to get there. I am fine with books keeping secrets and having mysteries, but the way that Knox leaves out information goes far beyond this. It almost feels lazy.

I know there are some people that seem to love this book and maybe if you enjoy reading a book that completely alienates the reader, then go ahead. But I wouldn't recommend it, there are so many other books to read and I wouldn't waste my time on this. I usually struggle through books when I'm not enjoying them, but for this one, it was impossible.

I need to read this again.

The sheer level of detail is amazing, layer up on layer of things to notice, which I probably didn't, hence wanting to read again.

I've never really gotten into the Hunt for Arcane Artefacts genre, and read less and less Adventure fiction, so this felt very much like a throwback to being eighteen and reading American Gods, as much for the feeling of being knee-deep in a six hundred page Elsewhere as for the conceptual and thematic similarities between the two. I'm not above escapism, it's fun to dart from film set to ancestral mansion to writer's conference to saw-style trap to gateway to hell, it's fun to throw ideas at each other & watch the sparks fly!

This book is weird, and wants to go everywhere, and has some very tender, painful memories and also some very ambitious dreams. I didn't love it, but it's kept me good company this week, even when I got tired and started dragging my feet through the last few chapters, and I Admire its Pluck.

I used this review copy to inform my interview with Elizabeth Knox on the Fantasy Inn podcast: https://thefantasyinn.com/2021/03/23/e77-elizabeth-knox-interview/

Unfortunately, I ended up DNFing this book at around the 15% mark. I wanted to enjoy it but I found the pacing too slow and wasn't invested in any of the characters or the story.

I did not finish this book. I found the premise unremarkable and the telling disjointed and distracting. Too many bits left unexplained.

This book was fantastic. Right from the beginning I ws hooked. A book about a book is utter genius and a must have for all readers everywhere. The twists and turns were great. This was a story I will remember for a long time.

Thank you to the author, publisher and NetGalley for allowing me to read this arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was an interesting read but felt overly long to me, certain things were drawn out more than needed and I couldn't always get along with the characters as much as I had hoped.

This is a gloriously imaginative page turner from a uniquely brilliant kiwi author. For lover of fantasy and general fiction alike - highly recommended!

It was the bit about the search for a mysterious book that attracted me deeply to this book. But having read it, this book is so much more than a magical fantasy. The Absolute Book works on many layers. It’s about the loss of a loved one and the grief that follows and the people this affects; it’s darkly woven, involves murder and revenge; it’s about redemption and hope. I loved losing myself within this book and was happily surprised and satisfied by it’s intricacy and complexity. Looking forward to more work by Elizabeth Knox

I found this epic faerie fantasy a fantastic concept, but quite hard to connect with in practice.

There are two main elements to the story: a thriller in which Taryn is trying to resolve her sister’s murder, with some sinister stalking and an official investigation; and a faerie-tale about the Sidhe, demons and a Tithe that must be paid. I loved both of these storylines separately, but didn’t feel they fit together well.

Also, the pace is very, very slow. At one point we get pages and pages of very detailed description of two characters attempting to drag a huge tyre through mud/water. It should be thrilling, because the characters are in danger of their lives due to the rising water, but the whole scene goes on for so long that it loses its emotional impact and just becomes a slog for the reader as well as the characters.

The two main characters, Taryn and Jacob, are both very guarded in their emotions, which makes it hard to empathise with them or their struggles. I found myself gradually becoming indifferent to what happened to them or how their stories would resolve.

Don’t get me wrong – the concepts and world-building here are absolutely great! It’s just that those aspects got buried under the mass of words, and of events just kind of happening, one after another, without any clear focus or direction. The writing is excellent, but the plot could be trimmed and tightened.

Very engaging, gripping story. I found this very entertaining. Read it very quickly and enjoyed my time. Highly recommended.
Thanks a lot for this copy.

What A Book! I can't believe it took me so long to get to it! I did try a couple of times to read The Absolute Book but it took a holiday and time to absorb the writing for me to get a grasp on it.

I'm not sure how to describe Knox's novel The Absolute Book. It starts in a library, with two sisters witnessing attempted arson. Or perhaps it starts by a river in 4th-century Britain, with two sisters raising children.

But perhaps where it starts is with Taryn Cornick, author of The Feverish Library, a bestselling book about the things that threaten libraries. (Each section of The Absolute Book is titled after a section of Taryn's book, for instance, Insects; Fire; Carelessness; Uncaring.) She makes an ill-advised arrangement in the wake of her sister's murder and discovers that she has a soul.

I had never heard of Knox until this book was dropped into my Netgalley and I absolutely adored this long twisty novel. And the ending is a delight to a joyful and exuberant novel, replete with optimism and meticulously observed.

Thank you for letting me read this book for an honest review otherwise who knows if I would have found this delightful read.

The Absolute Book is a rollercoaster saga, weaving legend and folklore with magical realism and just a dash of romance. This was my first foray into the writings of Elizabeth Knox, so I had no idea how much the novel would enchant me! For anyone who loves Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell or The Night Circus, please read this book, it's an absolute delight!

This was a lovely, lush read that stole my attention and had me gripped from the very beginning. The writing was gorgeous, the world-building was evocative and overall, this was a great story.

This was a tome of a novel and seriously in need of pruning!
And that really sums up this novel... there were so many aspects of it - the detective - the fantasy - the literary - that were good but could almost have been separate books. Putting them together made them feel just too much! Too heavy. Too weighty. Too complex - perhaps this says more about me than about Knox.
I wanted to like this so much more - Knox's writing is wonderfully precise and detailed - but perhpas I was not in the right place for it.

I liked this book. it was a little strange to read because on one hand it seems to be a fairly straightforward thriller/police procedural but then suddenly we are plunged into a magical world. This world is described very matter of factly and we have no clue as to how the two main characters are feeling - it seems that they just accept it and get on with it. The plot is a little complicated and felt overlong - although I also felt rushed when reading - there was a lot of prose just explaining the plot. It made for an interesting read overall.