The Left-Handed Booksellers of London by Garth Nix

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


There were a couple of things that caught my attention right away with this story. The first was it didn’t start with the story, the book started with an explanation of the fact that it was slightly alternate history. The next thing was that the wizard was named Merlin.

I almost put the book down right then. Merlin is so deeply, desperately overused I almost stopped.

I pushed on and finished the book. I enjoyed the story once I got past a couple of things, and the world building had some interesting bits. I don’t know that I’ll go any further in the series, but I’m glad to have checked this one off the TBR pile at least.



View all my reviews

Bonus bit for anyone who actually reads my review stuff here rather than directly on Goodreads. Once I got past the fact that the “Merlin” of this book was NOT in fact yet another Arthurian remake, I still couldn’t shake it. I could only picture the actor from the movie remake of the story from 2019 where Angus Imrie plays Merlin as a gangly, hyperactive teenager who uses a lot of hand-wavium and snapping to make things happen. Here’s a clip for you to enjoy:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/D53UhlAAXFw?si=emr3SHNG3__wRmoh