Library of Souls | Book review

Title: Library of Souls (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar's Children #3)

Author: Ransom Riggs

Published: September 22th 2015 by Quirk Books

Goodreads summary: The adventures that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued with Hollow City comes to a thrilling conclusion with Library of Souls.

As the story opens, sixteen-year-old Jacob discovers a powerful new ability, and soon he’s diving through history to rescue his peculiar companions from a heavily guarded fortress. Accompanying Jacob on his journey are Emma Bloom, a girl with fire at her fingertips, and Addison MacHenry, a dog with a nose for sniffing out lost children.

They’ll travel from modern-day London to the labyrinthine alleys of Devil’s Acre, the most wretched slum in all of Victorian England. It’s a place where the fate of peculiar children everywhere will be decided once and for all. 

Like its predecessors, Library of Souls blends thrilling fantasy with never-before-published vintage photography.

REVIEW

First of all, guys don’t read these books on an e–reader, because it’s REALLY awful (I tried, once), the pictures are much better quality and creepy in physical copies. I read Hollow City more than a year ago and I couldn’t remember the details very well, when Library of Souls picked right after it. The glossary was helpful, but not enough.

I was glad to be back in this creepy world, I really enjoyed the setting in Devil’s acre (I think it was Victorian era? Even better!). Riggs added a lot to his world, for example tales about peculiardom, it was scary but essential in this story. We got to know the truths behind hollowgasts and wights or meet characters we had heard about. We also learned why Abe was powerless against hollows when he dies or why he left the peculiar’s children.

However, this book had a big flaw, like the others: the chapters were way too long. Despite the pictures that took a lot of place, some of them were 60 pages long; I didn’t have THAT much time to read. Riggs’ writing is very dense, I always have a hard time to concentrate because of it, and it would really help if the chapters were shorter. For example, here, it was a 458 pages long book for eleven chapters.

The plot was fantastic; there wasn’t a moment to be bored. The book focused a lot on the dynamics between Jacob and Emma; I came to enjoy them more together. Addison is my fave, I don’t remember what he looked like so I picture him as Dough from Up!

The ending was simplistic in my opinion, like “boom” everything is resolved.

Have you read this trilogy? What did you think of it?