The Absolute Book isn’t exactly action-packed, and it does require some tenacity to get through the baggier sections. This is the kind of book that re-reading was made for. That can be pretty frustrating, but beneath the surface it’s really clever and layered, and if you go along for the ride, the eventual payoffs are surprising and gratifying in the best way. Even the supernatural characters are more likely to behave like scholars and diplomats than warriors or rulers.įor most of the novel, everything is so shrouded in mystery and written so obliquely that it’s hard to make much sense of it. It’s packed with literary references on top of all the mythology. Over 650 pages, the story wheels dizzyingly from Arthurian Britain to an antiquarian book shop in Wales to the Auckland Writer’s Festival to actual Purgatory. This is a strikingly weird novel that does a great job blending the fantastical with the prosaic. They team up to find an object of special power, but I won’t say more because letting this slippery story unspool is half the fun. She meets a strange man, whose face can never quite be seen clearly, who shapeshifts and loses his entire memory every 200 years. The human protagonist, Taryn, is a successful author dealing with the fallout of her sister’s murder years earlier. It really defies summation but what we’re dealing with here is an ode to stories, language, and libraries that takes the form of a quest/portal fantasy and incorporates a kitchen sink’s worth of myths and legends from Celtic, Judeo-Christian, Norse, ancient Greek traditions and more. The Absolute Book is an esoteric, often maddening, epic fantasy that is ultimately rooted in contemporary concerns. Above all, it is a declaration of love for stories and the ways in which they shape our worlds and create gods out of morals. It is a book of journeys and returns, from contemporary England to Auckland, New Zealand from a magical fairyland to Purgatory. The Absolute Book is epic, action-packed fantasy in which hidden treasures are recovered, wicked things resurface, birds can talk, and dead sisters are a living force.

Finally a shadowy young man named Shift appears, forcing Taryn and Jacob toward a reckoning felt in more than one world. Then there are questions about a fire in the library at her grandparents' house and an ancient scroll box known as the Firestarter, as well as threatening phone calls and a mysterious illness. but not all of the attention it brings her is good.Ī policeman, Jacob Berger, questions her about a cold case. She has written a successful book about the things that threaten libraries: insects, damp, light, fire, carelessness and uncaring. Taryn Cornick believes that the past-her sister's violent death, and her own ill-conceived revenge-is behind her, and she can get on with her life.

The absolute book by elizabeth knox