The Absolute Book, by Elizabeth Knox

This book is a mixture of so many genres: it is a fantasy that is set within our world and others, with elements of mythology, mystery, thriller, crime and magical realism. It is a book about books, and the main character writes books about the history of lost and damaged books and libraries, and themes of literature are prominent throughout the novel. Everything starts with the main character, Taryn, getting revenge on the man who killed her sister, and was given a disappointingly short jail sentence. She tries to move on from her past and focus on her career, but a police officer is convinced she is guilty of a crime, and she starts noticing terrifying and unexpected ways that she is behaving, and wonders if she is very ill.

I thought the book is packed with adventure and there was never a moment when I was bored. The novel includes angels, demons, possession, witches, magic and enchantments, ancient treasures, Gods, mythology, talking animals, shapeshifting and multiple worlds.

Even though it is a long book, it crams so much content into it - you jump about between worlds and places and characters all the time, and because it took me a long time to read I got really familiar with the characters!

My rating:

This gets a 4.75 rating for me, which I’ve rounded up to 5 as it is definitely a book I will think about for a long time, and will re-read in the future.

How accessible is it?

I fortunately went into this book knowing that it is not the easiest to read, it is very long (650+ pages), and can be quite confusing to readers about what is going on. Because of this, I didn’t panic too much when I had no idea what was happening, and usually after a while it does spell things out for you. I have seen other people on GoodReads saying that they think this book will be great for re-reading, because it is really multi-layered and complex and might make much more sense the second time through.

All photos from Unsplash