The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman tells the story of Irene, a spy who works for an organization called The Library.  The goal of The Library seems to be to collect all stories from all the different realities.  Apparently there are alternate universes and each universe has different stories and along with that, different elements of chaos and life forms. 

The ideas in this book are delicious. A person who just wants a good story is a tough, take no prisoners secret agent.  She's great at planning, fighting, and getting what she needs out of people. The idea of parallel planes has so many levels (what if there was a world without shrimp?) and it was exciting to dive in and see what those planes would look like.

Only...it wasn't exciting at all.

The writing just wasn't up to the ideas.  I couldn't really imagine what any of the places looked like. I couldn't imagine how Irene knew what she should be doing and how she should be doing it. I couldn't figure out the motivation for why anyone was doing anything.  This book should have been thrilling and instead I was falling asleep every time I read more than a page of it.

I'll pass on the next one in this series, thanks.