In the Stacks

In the Stacks is a high-concept fantasy novella let down by merely average execution. At the magical University of Hazar, the 5th year exam is in returning a library book. What makes this challenging is that it’s a magical library, a magical space full of monsters and traps, and librarians are more like D&D adventurers than bibliophiles and emergency social workers.

Conan the Librarian from Weird Al’s UHF

There are some good ideas: the premise and the vocabovore goblins foremost among them, but a story like this lives on character, action, and above all, mood. Laz never struck me as someone with a particular ambition to be a wizard, the swords and sorcery is nothing unusual to someone who’s played a lot of D&D, and the mood of an oppressive, eldritch library just didn’t come through for me at all.

A delightful amusement, which I’d like to round up to 4 stars, but the best that I can say is that In the Stacks doesn’t outstay its welcome, which is faint praise indeed.