Thank you NetGalley and Capstone for the ARC provided.

My first impression after reading this book, it was a smart idea to bring a library as some kind of a temple/ancient place that needs to be guard. There is also “ a Silent One” character which being vowed for being silence, and they’re secret orders of a young readers. I think this character represent as a librarian who dedicated their whole life only for books.

While the library being attacked by the raiders and the silent one summoned the Librarian to defend the library, it brings my mind to think “that would be interesting what if the raiders successfully captured the Archives, what are they going to do with that?”. More great adventures and fighting scene would be great for this part.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get the point why the raiders wants the archives, what’s in the archives, who vowed the Silent One, where/who is the young readers, and who is the Librarian himself, not enough details for all of the above.

Overall, I think the book is great for a kind of story telling with braveheart, loyal, adventorous type. I like how the ilustrator wrote some certain words become bold or italic in order to put more tense whenever we read the words. Plus put the library as an important thing to defend, another bright idea, any children who loves to read will do the same thing.

Lots and Lots of These

So, I decided to try to figure out how many of these books there are, and how they fit together. Every site, including Dahl's and the FictionDB, are woefully incomplete. But if your kid likes them it's helpful to have a sense of how it all fits together.

From 2007-2008 we have "Library of Doom", with about 13 books. 2010-2011 gives us "Return to the Library of Doom", and about 10 books. "Library of Doom: The Final Chapter" is 2015-2016, and has at least 8 books.

This book is part of the "Secrets of the Library of Doom", and has just come out. There may be others, but this covers the ones with which I'm familiar.

I went through all of this because I think the books are getting better, or are at least developing in an interesting fashion. The first books are a little Twilight Zone-y, with an R.L. Stine flavor. The later books focus more on the Librarian and have a bit more of an adventure flair. This latest book is a touch mystical, and there's more emphasis on really quite sharp illustrations and fun with fonts and layout, (like Geronimo Stilton).

The book is very brief, with just one or two sentences per page. I'm thinking very much along the lines of first-reader fantasy. As in earlier books, there's a setup, a good character, a villain, the Librarian, two or three action bits, some book "magic", and then a sort of open fantasy ending. As I say, all of the basics in a first-reader way. I don't think I'd buy a lot of these titles sight unseen at once, but I'd be sure to try at least one on each of my youngsters, just to see if it clicked or not. I can't resist them, and think of them as booky potato chips.

(Please note that I received a free advance will-self-destruct-in-x-days Adobe Digital copy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)

"Secrets of the Library of Doom" is not at all what I was expecting, but it is really cool. I'll definitly recommend this one.

Where to start with this book...Dahl's story began with an eye roll, got interesting, then ended with a "that's it?"

Somewhere in the universe is a library that should never be used, is protected by The Librarian and a boy who has taken a vow of silence. The library is invaded by what can only be described as ghostly-looking vikings.

The graphics are wonderful and peak the reader's interest, but are unfortunately overshadowed by the questions left in the reader's mind after reading the story.

It's a good story, but it's too short! This story should be a novel with a complete beginning, middle, and end. The highlighting of vocabulary words is annoying to adult and older readers, but many books are doing this these days and comes with the territory of reading children's books. The greatest complaint is that, really, there are more questions than answers which left me frustrated with the author. Five stars for the graphics, but 2 stars for the story.