As a writer, I’m often asked where my ideas come from. I don’t really have a good answer. Sometimes, a random song lyric will spark a short story. A moment in a television show the idea for an entire novel. A line from a book the thesis for an academic paper. But what fires in my brain between seeing/hearing/reading that thing and the formation of an idea? The process that fleshes out the cell, builds it into a skeleton, and then crafts a body? Not a clue.

At least, not until I read A.J. Hackwith’s The Library of the Unwritten (Ace, 10/1).

Now I know.

All of my unwritten stories live in the Unwritten Wing of Hell’s Library. They live with all of the other unwritten stories, guarded and protected by Hell’s librarian.

And Lucifer  save me if they get out when they’re not supposed to.

I remember hearing about The Library of the Unwritten several months ago and hoping very much that’d I’d get an early copy because October seemed very far away; so I was extremely excited when it showed up at my door.

I was not disappointed.

Claire is the head librarian of the Unwritten Wing. Her predecessor disappeared under mysterious circumstance, and the demon Andras – who also serves as Arcanast in the library – completed her training so no harm done. Probably.

One of Claire’s books goes rogue and runs off to find its author. So she; her assistant, the disgraced muse Brevity; and newly minted demon, Leto, go after it before too much harm can be done. Their mission goes awry, however, when they’re intercepted by the angel Ramiel, who is searching for a different lost book on behalf of the archangel Gabriel – a book over which Heaven and Hell will gladly start a war and which both sides are quite sure Claire has.

The theologian in me is a sucker for any novel that involves the denizens of heaven and hell, and the academic/troublemaker in me is utterly thrilled whenever that conflict is couched in such a way that the reader isn’t sure which side she’s supposed to be pulling for – if she’s supposed to be pulling for either.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned this in relation to comics in the past, but I’m also a huge fan of moral ambiguity in literature. I think shades of gray, preferably multiple hues, make for a much more engaging story than mere black and white, and Hackwith has the entire spectrum covered in The Library of the Unwritten. Some of the characters aren’t even sure where they stand on that spectrum – Ramiel, for example, because of choices he’s made in the past, and Leto, at the other end, because he doesn’t actually know who he is. The depth and breadth of feeling and behavior and internal compass Hackwith captures with relatively few characters is breathtaking.

I’m not always a fan of multiple strong voice characters within a single narrative, though I think it works in The Library of the Unwritten for several reasons: the voices are distinct from one another, the characters aren’t together for the entire duration of the narrative, and Hackwith chooses the voice characters very deliberately rather than spreading the story among them as a device.

Stories are very personal things and to have told this one from an omniscient perspective would have been a disservice to the characters and to the reader, which means several different people needed the opportunity to say their piece.

I also enjoyed the ways in which Hackwith plays with tropes in the novel. It is, at its heart, a story about stories, which means such things must at least be acknowledged. It would have been easy to allow Claire, Hero, Leto, Brevity, and Andras to carry along and focus on the action but, instead, Hackwith takes the time to poke holes in the very tropes she’s exploring, letting the truths of people bleed through and peek around edges.

Claire is kind beneath her hard, brash exterior. Andras has regrets. Ramiel has a conscience. Brevity cares more about people than ideas. And Leto is not at all what he seems. This allows the reader to understand the true purpose behind the shorthand: to give the writer a foundation from which to build living, breathing beings with whom the reader can connect without having to start from scratch every time. And if that building process bogged the narrative down in a few places for a bit, it was worth it to make some new friends.

I can’t wait for all of you to have the opportunity to visit the library in October, and I’m thrilled The Library of the Unwritten is only a first foray into this world.