Library of Souls Review: Jacob

Book: Library of Souls
Author: Ransom Riggs
Series: Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children
Standing: Book 3 (final)
POV: 1st person by Jacob, past tense
Setting: London
Genre: YA paranormal, horror

Source: Physical copy
Publisher: Quirk Books
Pages: 458
Release: September 22nd, 2015

Goodreads A boy with extraordinary powers. An army of deadly monsters. An epic battle for the future of peculiardom. The adventure that began with Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children and continued in 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 to create a one-of-a-kind reading experience.

Anyone feeling peculiar after that ending?

This book picks up literally seconds after the ending of the last book. Nothing like a good cliffhanger to leave reader on, right? It just means that when you start this book, you're thrown immediate back into the life-or-death moment the last book ended off on.

Jacob, Emma, and Addison are the only ones who have escaped capture by the wights. However, the rest of their friends, including many other peculiars from other loops, have been taken to who-knows-where, where the wights will be using them to attempting to re-create the same disaster that first introduced the deadly hollowgasts into the world. Their journey is not an easy one, with the only hope they have being their wits and Jacob's new ability.

Jacob was quite the character in this book. His struggle with his new ability provided an excellent sense of uncertainty, adding both fear and horror to the plot. However, I would have preferred to see him go through a more extensive mental transition into his powers. He can't figure his power out at first, which I liked, but I would have preferred it if his character development allowed him to access his power, not the other way around.

As always, the physical book itself is astonishing. The individual pages have a peculiar firmness to them, not the which really gives it an old vintage sense. The eerie photos scattered throughout the book provide an additional sense of uneasiness, especially since the photos feature real people. I really enjoyed the plot of this story, and the abilities of new peculiars were ones I'd never heard of (mainly because there's an added sense of horror rather than fantasy). The writing was lush and descriptive, poetic, even as Riggs described the slums of Devil's Acre.

I do feel a little cheated at the end. Don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I just found it to be a little too easy, a little too coincidental. Everything wrapped up in a nice bow after a very desperate moment. It would have been interesting--though terrifying--if the ending became very Mara Dyer-esque, but I understand why it ended the way it did. Mental asylums are not always the answer!

This book, much like all the others, is completely unpredictable in both a fantastic and horrifying sense. I invite anyone to give the series a try...though I feel like a few of you will, especially since the first book will be a movie, coming out December 2016!

"While we appreciate your help and expertise, our friends' lives have been given an expiration date. I won't stall and dwindle about simple to avoid ruffling some feathers!"