Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson - Book Review

"All sorcerers are evil. Elisabeth has known that as long as she has known anything. Raised as a foundling in one of Austermeer’s Great Libraries, Elisabeth has grown up among the tools of sorcery—magical grimoires that whisper on shelves and rattle beneath iron chains. If provoked, they transform into grotesque monsters of ink and leather. She hopes to become a warden, charged with protecting the kingdom from their power.

Then an act of sabotage releases the library’s most dangerous grimoire. Elisabeth’s desperate intervention implicates her in the crime, and she is torn from her home to face justice in the capital. With no one to turn to but her sworn enemy, the sorcerer Nathaniel Thorn, and his mysterious demonic servant, she finds herself entangled in a centuries-old conspiracy. Not only could the Great Libraries go up in flames, but the world along with them.

As her alliance with Nathaniel grows stronger, Elisabeth starts to question everything she’s been taught—about sorcerers, about the libraries she loves, even about herself. For Elisabeth has a power she has never guessed, and a future she could never have imagined."

I have only one word for this book - predictable. It wasn't boring in a way that books sometimes are, by being slow, dull and having no visible plot. This was made boring mainly because every page of it felt like I had read it before. Elisabeth, the main character, was slow to understand what was happening around her and took days to make obvious connections. Nathaniel was alright, being a mix of the usual heroes and a little bit original. 

This book had a lot of unclear descriptions. Throughout the book, we are never really told how grimoires looked. I could only imagine them as gigantic books with spindly limbs and mean eyes sprouting from the cover. Elisabeth's looks haven't been mentioned either. The book was also filled to the brim with unnecessary similies. Every single object, feeling or scene has been compared to something unrelated.  

Elisabeth was the worst part of the book. She was undeniably stupid and reckless. She made a lot of rash decisions, mistakes and wasted time, yet had no backlash. Everything that happened in the plot was just convenient and happened due to nothing she or Nathaniel had done. Every foolish decision should have landed her dead. I ​also did not like the reason they gave for Elisabeth being resilient to sorcery, for it hardly made sense.

The book was pretty fun to read, though. It wasn't too slow and the basic plot developed by the author was good. The characters did not have much of a personality apart from their assigned roles, but that didn't bother me too much. The world-building was pretty good. I liked how the author had given us details about sorcerers and the libraries. It was also nice to read a book in which the girl did the fighting and the boy was the brains. It was a refreshing change. I did not really like the living-magical-books parts of it too much. I also did not understand the enmity between libraries and sorcerers. Grimoires were magic, written by magicians. And the whole purpose of the library wardens was to protect them, yet they were somehow opposed to sorcerers. Nathaniel being able to convert the malefict back into a book only further proved that magicians and librarians should be working together.

The ending was very dissatisfying. The author did not want to kill any of her main characters, so it ended like anyone could have guessed it would. There were hardly any unpredictable plot twists, or revelations, at the end. I liked how she used grimoires to kill the demons, but I couldn't comprehend how the entire army was defeated by a bunch of paper cuts. Elisabeth and Nathaniel had conveniently survived up till then, so they also conveniently survived the climax. I hadn't wanted Silas to die, so I was happy when he was brought back. But again, it was annoying how everything Elisabeth did, happened to succeed. Also, if summoning demons made one a sorcerer, was Elisabeth a sorcerer now? Would she lose twenty years of her life again? Or would Silas return as a human, since his sacrifice had changed him? None of these questions were properly answered.