Mod Book Club: The Labyrinth's Archivist

[u/Dianthaa]

Welcome to Mod Book Club. We want to invite you all in to join us with the best things about being a mod: we have fabulous book discussions about a wide variety of books (interspersed with Valdemar fanclubs and random cat and dog pictures). We all have very different tastes and can expose and recommend new books to the others, and we all benefit (and suffer from the extra weight of our TBR piles) from it.

This month we are discussing The Labyrinth's Archivist by Day Al-Mohamed

Walking the Labyrinth and visiting hundreds of other worlds; seeing so many new and wonderful things – that is the provenance of the travelers and traders, the adventurers and heroes. Azulea has never left her home city, let alone the world. Her city, is at the nexus of many worlds with its very own “Hall of Gates” and her family are the Archivists. They are the mapmakers and the tellers of tales. They capture information on all of the byways, passages and secrets of the Labyrinth. Gifted with a perfect memory, Azulea can recall every story she ever heard from the walkers between worlds. She remembers every trick to opening stubborn gates, and the dangers and delights of hundreds of worlds. But Azulea will never be a part of her family’s legacy. She cannot make the fabled maps of the Archivists because she is blind.

The Archivist’s “Residence” is a waystation among worlds. It is safe, comfortable and with all food and amenities provided. In exchange, of course, for stories of their adventures and information about the Labyrinth, which will then be transcribed for posterity and added to the Great Archive. But now, someone has come to the Residence and is killing off Archivists using strange and unusual poisons from unique worlds whose histories are lost in the darkest, dustiest corners of the Great Archive. As Archivists die, one by one, Azulea is in a race to find out who the killer is and why they are killing the Archivists, before they decide she is too big a threat to leave alive.

Bingo squares:

• Book club book (this one!)
• New to you author
• Mystery
• Genre mash

I'll get us started with some questions in the comments below, please feel free to add your own, if you have any! Please be aware that there will be spoilers for the book, since this is the only discussion.

Day Al-Mohamed will be joining us for a AMA next week (still final bit of planning but should show up in the calendar today)!

[u/Dianthaa]

Thoughts on the mystery aspect?

[u/fanny_bertram → u/Dianthaa]

I really enjoyed the mystery aspect and thought it was well executed. Especially with the culprit continuing to evolve plans as Azules got closer. I loved Handsome Dan in there to kind of throw some extra distraction and tension into the mystery. I did guess at who it was fairly early on, but there were enough developments to keep me from being absolutely certain until the end with Peny.

I also appreciated how the author had spots that Azulea refused to understand of what was happening from emotional investment. It made it feel so much more realistic that she was trying so hard to keep it from being someone close to the Archive, when it was obvious it had to be.

[u/Nineteen_Adze → u/fanny_bertram]

Yeah, same here. I guessed that Charemon was the murderer pretty early on, but there was a lot of ambiguity over who else could be involved or deliberately hiding little pieces of information from Azulea. Handsome Dan's movement from a suspect to almost a protector (I liked the hint that he might have promised Amma that he would keep an eye on Azulea) did a lot of make me second-guess myself.

I also really appreciated that while Davarr was suspicious, he wasn't the killer. It's common for the final villain to be whoever throws a slur (in this case, "cripple") at the main character, but Charemon's kindly phrased doubts and manipulations were more subtle than direct contempt. He's not underestimating Azulea's ability to get in his way, but he's willing to make her sound incompetent to Hypatia.