Book Review- The Left-Handed Booksellers of London

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. -Goodreads

My thanks to Gollancz and NetGalley for the digital eARC edition of this book.

I love Garth Nix and this book featured very highly on my most anticipated releases of the year list, so I was very excited to get into this read!

This book is an enjoyable fantasy adventure story set in an alternative 1980s London where a group of magic-wielding Booksellers reside and keep an eye on other magical creatures, while still managing to sell a few books!!

This is a well written adventure story, suitable for teens and adults alike, and features plenty of Nix’s usual wit and humour! I must admit that personally I was hoping for slightly more, but that is probably more a reflection on my high expectations than the novel itself. The novel’s plot is very fast-paced and action packed, it flies along at a very quick speed which is excellent, but I do feel that we missed out a bit of character development because of the crazy speed we were whisked along at. The speed also lessened the impact of the twists and turns of the novel for me, as everything seemed to happen so fast without giving the reader any time to actually consider anything that was occurring!

Sadly the novel doesn’t feature much actual bookshop action which I was disappointed with, the title makes reference to book selling, but a bookshop doesn’t play a part really. Despite the title and a few book references during the book itself, I feel that the book is sorely lacking in actual book content!!

Our main character is called Susan, and she is thrown into this world when she witnesses a family acquaintance being vaporised by one of these booksellers. I liked her as a character, and its always fun to discover a new world through the eyes of a character thrown into the world too.

However, overall I did enjoy this fantasy adventure. I think it would be a perfect read for teens as well as adults, and anyone with a love of books is bound to dream of being one of these Booksellers!

Buy the book from Waterstones here

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