Badass booksellers who double as somewhat super mysterious secret agents that keep creatures straight out of old myths in check and casually save the world on a regular basis. That’s basically what the latest fantasy from Garth Nix, The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, is about. If that sounds even remotely awesome to you, trust me, you want to read this book immediately.
Susan Arkshaw is an eighteen-year-old on a quest to find her absentee father. She’d hoped crime boss Frank Thringley would be able to help to her, but before she can get any information out of him, he is turned to dust by a young man named Merlin, who tells her about the clan of booksellers he belongs to. They are a group of people who have always kept the mythic, dangerous Old World separate from the modern world. Merlin is one of the left-handed sort, who are the fighters, and then there are the right-handed booksellers, who are the scholars. Susan comes to know how Merlin is on a quest of his own too, to find those who murdered his mother. As the Old World threatens to merge with the New, Susan must team up with Merlin and his right-handed sister Vivien to stop that from happening.
Even though the story plunges straight into action after a brief prologue, it starts out slowly, packing a lot of worldbuilding within the first hundred or so pages. This is where the book risks losing readers, as it does take some time to really pull you in. After I got past the 100 page mark, however, I really started enjoying the story. Nix’s writing is engaging and precise, and keeps you turning pages as the POV jumps back and forth between multiple characters, but mostly Susan. The plot is wildly unpredictable in the first half while a lot of people get killed and it might confuse you a bit, but as the multiple threads of the story start coming together in the second half, you’d find it making a lot more sense.
The absolute best thing about The Left-Handed Booksellers of London is definitely Merlin, who reminded me a lot of Howl from Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones. He is a really fun character, not to mention incredibly charming. As Susan puts it, Merlin is ‘attractive, mysterious, and annoying all at once’, and if magical and whiny people with a weirdly cool fashion sense are your type, you’d find Merlin irresistible too. I found Susan to be fairly one-dimensional, especially next to Merlin, but it was Vivien who managed to steal the spotlight from him quite a few times. I do wish the antagonist had been a little more fleshed-out, though; maybe then his intentions would have seemed clearer.
For a standalone fantasy, however, the setup sure took an unusually long amount of time. After finishing the book, I couldn’t help feeling like the story had a lot more to offer and could have been stretched out a bit instead of being rushed for the sake of a neat wrap-up; the ending didn’t seem like an ending at all. Even though the focus of the story was on Susan and her journey, I found the world of booksellers to be more intriguing with a lot of unexplored potential, and did feel a little (okay, very) disappointed when I realised the story wouldn’t be centred around them after all. If Nix ever decides to write a companion novel focused on Merlin or any of the other booksellers, I’m definitely going to pick it up.
If you’re a fan of Percy Jackson-esque books and are often found lamenting the fact that YA/adult fiction doesn’t have anything as exciting as them to offer, I think you might be interested in The Left-Handed Booksellers of London. Divine mythic beings who have kids with mortals and then proceed to never acknowledge that said kids exist? Check. Semi-divine kids with superpowers going on quests to find their immortal parents? Check. An elite group of warriors and scholars from all over the world fighting foul creatures of legend and saving humanity? Check. Also, if you’ve loved the haunting legends, the magical forests and the deliciously creepy atmosphere in The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater or The Devouring Gray by Christine Lynn Herman, this book is right up your alley.
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of September 22nd 2020.
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Synopsis | Goodreads
A girl’s quest to find her father leads her to an extended family of magical fighting booksellers who police the mythical Old World of England when it intrudes on the modern world. From the bestselling master of teen fantasy, Garth Nix.
In 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 (the intellectual ones), are an extended family of 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 quest 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.
