The Memory of Babel
I'm developing, I think, a theory of how book quartets work. The first volume does a lot of worldbuilding, is capable of standing alone, but is also somewhat open-ended, without dictating what should follow. The second volume establishes the direction for the rest of the series, and the third fully commits, setting up the situation for the last volume to resolve.
The Memory of Babel is the third book in its quartet, and I have to tell you, when I read the first book, I wouldn't have guessed where this series was going. I thought it was going to be primarily a romance, with Ophelia either eventually growing to love her cold, distant arranged-fiance Thorn, or else finding romance with the lovable scamp Archibald, who we're told all the women in the court of the Pole cheat on their husbands with.
But instead what we get is a mystery. Why is the world broken into twenty Arks floating in space? Who is the mysterious 'God' who created the Family Spirits who birthed the magical royal families that rule each Ark? In the second book, someone loyal to God committed a string of murders in the Pole, and kidnapped Archibald, planning to kill him, all to prevent Thorn from learning the Family Spirits' secret - that God had torn a page from each the living Book that somehow creates the Spirits, robbing each of them of their memories. Ophelia saved Archibald, finally married Thorn, and then was separated from him, sent back home to Anima while Thorn vanished to go hunt for God while God hunted him back.
Three years pass in this waiting period, until Archibald rescues Ophelia from her family, and she sets off to find and maybe rescue Thorn. She travels to the ark of Babel, with its MC Escher architecture and its giant library, and she enrolls in an elite school, hoping to be the top student in her class so that she can access the secret central room of the library, where supposedly ultimate knowledge is kept. Oh, and she's in disguise again! Not a magic illusion this time, just a fake name and passport to keep God's informers from reporting her to him.
In library school, Ophelia deals with a mind-reading mean girl blackmailer, makes friends with a genius older student and a jinxed library staff member, crosses paths with the revolutionary trying to tear down Babel's system of censorship, and, oh yeah, tries to solve another murder mystery, which this time seems to be killing anyone who gets too close to God's secrets.
Ophelia eventually does manage to find Thorn again, and she increasingly discovers that she has subconscious access to some of God's memories. She and Thorn, after a year-long engagement where they rarely saw each other, and another three years apart, are now falling in love for real, and are finally physically intimate. Oh, and also the world is maybe starting to end faster?
Ophelia was a teenager and a bit of a late bloomer in the first two books, but here we see her becoming an adult woman. She still has doubts and fears, but more courage to face them, and a bit more skill and cunning in social situations. She's not the naive kid she was at first. She basically becomes a spy on her own initiative, to find Thorn and figure out how to stop this God person who's threatening both of them, and she mostly succeeds, rising to the occasion far more than she stumbles.
I think Ophelia's part of the next book will take place in Babel again, but I also thought this one would be set on Anima, so who knows. Also Archibald has successfully traveled to the secret hidden Ark where people who can magically manipulate space live. His infant niece, Victoria, has accidentally spirit-walked her soul there with him (while her body remains in the Pole,) and it's possible that God, who can disguise himself as anyone, has followed him too. So probably that will be important next time also!
The bizarre architecture and general 'you're late to take a test you didn't study for' vibe of this book continue the dreamlike feeling of the series, as do the invisible killer who scares his victims to death, Victoria's out-of-body travels, and the threat of an enemy who can look like anybody and has loyal informers everywhere. I'm genuinely wondering how this will end!
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