The Library of Broken Worlds

by Alaya Dawn Johnson

A girl matches wits with a war god in this kaleidoscopic, epic tale of oppression and the cost of peace, where stories hide within other stories, and narrative has the power to heal… or to burn everything in its path.

In the winding underground tunnels of the Library, the great celestial peacekeeper of the three systems, a terrible secret lies buried.

As the daughter of a Library god, Freida has spent her whole life exploring the Library's ever-changing tunnels and communing with the gods. Her unparalleled access makes her unique – and dangerous.

When Freida meets Joshua, a mortal boy desperate to save his people, and Nergüi, a Disciple from a persecuted religious minority, Freida is compelled to break ranks with the gods and help them. But in order to do so, she will have to venture deeper into the Library than she has ever known. There she will discover the atrocities of the past, the truth of her origins, and the impossibility of her future…

With the world at the brink of war, Freida embarks on a journey to fulfill her destiny, one that pits her against an ancient war god. Her mission is straightforward: Destroy the god before he can rain hellfire upon thousands of innocent lives – if he doesn't destroy her first.

Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult, Science Fiction, Fiction, Books About Books, LGBT, Science Fiction Fantasy

448 pages, Hardcover

First published June 6, 2023

About the author

Alaya Johnson graduated from Columbia University in 2004 with a BA in East Asian Languages and Cultures. She lives in New York City.

Reviews

[P. Clark · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alaya Dawn Johnson writes pure poetry—no other way to put it. This fantastic tale of AI gods and their creators grabbed me immediately and never let go. Pure genius.

[Vi · Rating 1 out of 5]

The Library of broken worlds is an interesting concept filled with AI, sci-fi and societal issues.

Told in 1st Person POV, Freida is recounting her story to a god. Interesting as the concept is, the writing itself was hard to follow. Johnson prose is metaphors on top of metaphors that requires diligent focus to decipher meaning behind novel abstractions.

Sexuality and pronouns are nonexistence and can be quite confusing until you set a mindset on differentiating the meaning of certain pronouns or else it can be convoluting. Like my friend thought ze/zir were the gods (yin/yang). When really it was sorta like a pronoun that is genderless.

Overall this story wasn’t for me. I attempted valiantly to finish this book but the amount of metaphors and prose was deterring personally, especially first person pov. I was not drawn to continue to discover the end goal. Perhaps someone else that loves this style will enjoy it more. Quite sad as this was one of my most anticipated read of the summer.

[Lindsay]

DNF @ 30%

No rating, just really not for me. Not enough exposition to let me understand what was happening and narrators that weren't working for me.

[milliereadsalot · Rating 2 out of 5]

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free eARC in exchange for an honest review!

I... don't exactly know how to write this review. I think the lesson I've learned here is not to be sucked in by a pretty cover - because oh my goodness is this cover beautiful, but the story disappointed me. It was very confusing, with a unique style of narration that might suit other readers but did not work for me. Because I found it so baffling, I couldn't bring myself to really care about the book or become invested in the story - it was really hard to follow who the characters were, they all felt very similar, and so I ended up just not caring. I couldn't actually tell you what happened in this book, because I could not wrap my head around what was happening. I think there's some really great ideas going on here, but the execution just did not work for me sadly.

[Jaimes_Mystical_Library · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a great ya sci-fi fantasy read! I loved the author’s beautiful and descriptive writing style and the overall storyline of this book. I struggled at first to get into and visualize the world, but then I got into it. Overall this was a good read, perfect for book lovers who like science fiction and fantasy books.

[Esther O. Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

tl;dr: I need y'all to read this book, it blew me away and *keyboard smash*

idk if i will get around to writing a better review so in the meanwhile, some thoughts:
-cw: sexual assault (the scene is fade to black IIRC)
-I think the low ratings are because this book (and Trouble the Saints) were mismarketed. This is billed as YA, but IMO reads like adult SFF. ETA Sept 20 2023: having now seen the book in hardcopy, there are blurbs from YA authors and N.K. Jemisin and Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.
-this is not a magical library vibes book. it’s more an archive that is delved into to litigate a SCOTUS case. Personally, I was hooked once the SCOTUS case dropped and I realized this was less an adventure novel and more of a knowledge quest.
-the sheer layers of narrative is some NK Jemisin level stuff
-queer normative world!
-the curve to understanding the worldbuilding is pretty steep (even steeper than Yoon Ha Lee's Ninefox Gambit), and I say that as someone who reads A LOT of SFF. i encourage you to relinquish the need to understand every little detail, trust yourself to understand the essentials as you go, and trust where the author is taking you because whewwww it is such a rewarding experience.

Also, the way she links Freida's understanding of her own personhood, her assault, and her ability to claim the narrative? *chefs kiss*

[Eilonwy]

No rating because DNF

AI? Or human? Freida has been brought up in the Library of four worlds since she was a foundling, and wants nothing more than to become a Librarian. But she struggles as a postulant, plus war threatens. Freida takes on a mission to undo one of the gods, telling him her story before she does so.

Or at least that's what I got from this story before I gave up on it around Page 70.

This is beautifully written and full of complex worldbuilding and ideas. The mood of this world and story enveloped me for the entire team I was reading. It felt like 4 or 5 stars.

But ... it's too complex for the year/month I've been having, and I did not have the brain-power to absorb and appreciate all the layers of this book. I think Teen Eilonwy would have loved the challenge of all the philosophy in this society, and discussions about "freedom to" versus "freedom from." But Adult Me struggled to get through it -- it took me two full weeks to read 70 pages! -- and craved some action.

I fully intend to give this book another shot when I have more time and more mental space, plus I'll know what I'm getting into on the second try. Freida's desire to prove she's truly human is sweet and touching, and I'd like to see how that gets worked out.

[ambyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

This might be the most aggressively unwilling to explain itself novel I've ever read.

Did I like it? Did I not like it? I am not sure these are the right questions. Certainly I appreciate it for having creative vision and an absolute unwillingness to compromise itself. I am not sure it sticks the landing but I also have no idea what I'd change.

[Natalie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alaya Dawn Johnson writes deeply weird books, and I am extremely here for it. This one is kind of like if you threw Lirael, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, and the Machineries of Empire in a blender, but somehow made it even weirder than that sounds in the best possible way?

I had a very love-hate relationship with the first 100 pages or so, because the writing was very ornate for my taste and I felt like the frame story/the conceit that Frieda (the narrator; a teenage AI who was raised as a human and trained as a librarian, and is now trying to kill a god) is telling her story to the god she is trying to assassinate was getting in the way of my connecting with the characters by holding all the events at arms' length. However, after those first few chapters, the writing settled and became less ornate and more immediate, and I was fully sucked in. This may have been a conscious choice--Freida has a lot of shame about the things she's narrating in the first few chapters, so it makes sense she would want to distance herself more--but it didn't quite work for me.

But the rest of this book was GLORIOUS. I loved all of Freida's complicated relationships--with her friends, her parent, her romantic partners of various genders, and her gods--and I loved how much of the plot revolved around exploring a divine library in order to find historical precedent for a civil rights court case. Also, props to ADJ for managing to create an evil space empire I actually wanted to see overthrown!

Parts of the ending didn't feel quite earned--Iemaja's literal deus ex machina felt a little too rushed, as did Nameren's capitulation, and their decision to spare Freida seemed slightly too hopeful, but after the gut-punch ending of Trouble the Saints, I was happy to suspend my disbelief for Freida's survival--and the in-depth explanation of the quantum physics religion made me roll my eyes a little (my dad is a physicist, a fact which makes dude bros really want to tell me about how much they loved *insert pop science [fantasy] bestseller here*, so I have heard enough layperson explanations of quantum theory to last my whole life), but those were minor quibbles.

Overall, a really excellent read I am going to be chewing over for a long time.

[Mariella Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm gonna be generous and give this a three. Because I really don't think it was probably as "meh" as I thought it was. I'm fully aware that part of my lackluster feelings about this story were because I really struggle with the sci-fi genre and the worlds get a little out there for me if not well explained. That said, I think people who really like this genre would probably enjoy this story more than I did.

One thing I did really love about this story was the narrative voice and style that it was written in. It was a very unique sort of narration that I could have read all day. The issue was, for me, that I really just didn't care enough/become invested enough in the stakes and the style alone wasn't enough to carry the story as fully as it needed to.

However, on the writing end specifically, I feel like it could have used another line edit. There were a lot of lengthy, convoluted sentences. Which isn't always an issue when reading. But it became an issue here because there were multiple characters of multiple gender identities he/she/they/zie all in a room at the same time and interacting in the same sentence and so it became rather hard to follow which one was doing what and when, which rather pulled me out of the story because I had to keep going back and trying to figure out who was who and what they were doing. Because pronouns were used more often than names and sometimes two people with the same pronouns were referred to in the same sentence. It was a whole time.

That said, one of the aspects that really intrigued me was the gods of this world and how they interacted with humans and how they each had distinct history and personality while also not at all coming off as being weak or humanized. That was intriguing to me and I would love to see something like that done in a better written/paced story.

[Madison Trice · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so beautiful and layered. It almost speaks in dreams. It’s a story of possibilities, choice, radical love, and what we owe to ourselves and to each other. It’s sort of an epic, and adds so much to the afrofuturist canon. I loved it, and I feel like I’ll have to read it through several times to get everything from it. I’m going to enjoy the journey.
Some things I loved: the prose - always beautiful, always poignant. Freida - so lovable, so resonant, imperfect and really gets some things wrong before getting them right. The discussion of autonomy versus self sacrifice which feels so honest. The notion of rewriting violent spiritualities. The queer love and the second love in this story. The way this book deals with survivors, deals with conflict and oppression of the marginalized. The world in all of its vivid colors and patient revealing of itself. The characters of the gods. I could go on and on. Mostly it’s just a book I really treasure, and I hope it receives its flowers, because it feels like both a book built for our times and also a book ahead of/beyond its time. It is restorative and healing and also just really cool to see the ways the world and characters are build and slot into each other. Again and again would recommend.
* one other note: a few reviews have remarked negatively on the pronouns used in the book. This is really common and important in a lot of afrofuturist works - envisioning worlds beyond present constructs of gender, and I think it’s done both subtly and exceptionally well in this book. So I appreciate the use of ze/zir pronouns in this book, which I feel honestly shouldn’t have to be said, and I do find myself sad that people write off books for using non-binary pronouns - they are missing out.

[Char · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I feared our gods every bit as much as I loved them. Through their potential for destruction, they have earned our worship"

I am on the fence with this book. I saw someone mention this as a "high sci fi" and I couldn't agree more. I think however it lacked a lot of explanation for some things and even through finishing the book I did not understand how the world was laid out nor how the politics exactly worked

Despite this I did really enjoy the actual story and the narration was unique and engaging. I'd be interested to read more into the entire world with a little bit more information about everything especially in regards to the gods. The characters I loved, Frieda being our main character and then the side characters such as Joshua, Nadi, and Nergui. Ignoring the stupidly long chapters, I enjoyed how the story was told as a story so to speak - you'll have to read it to find out why :p

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hesitated as I picked the tags, because the book's not easily categorized. I bought it because Johnson had signed copies at our new local bookshop, Octavia's Bookshelf. Johnson explains in the afterward that her influences included Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany (two of my all-time favorites) as well as (as will be obvious to fans of Spirited Away) Studio Ghibli, among others. When I first began the book I was worried it was going to slide into YA romance and/or court intrigue, but the story moves through layers and layers of a complex, deeply-imagined, fever dream of a world built of (what appear to be AI?) gods and planetary wars and genocides, legal strategies, and musings about tesseracts and multiverses. The main character is, herself, complicated, strong, conflicted, and ever-evolving; all the other characters - a broad range of people across species, affiliations, classes, ages, genders, sexualities, etc. is seen through her unique lens and bizarre experiences. There are some very moving bits, some horrors, and the story, despite its pervasive spiky weirdness, draws the readers along, impelling us forward and expecting us to keep up (which I kind of did, akin to listening to people speak quickly in a language in which I have some facility but not fluency). Mostly I wanted to sit down with Johnson and ask her questions - I would love to know what's happening in her head and what (beyond war and genocide as nightmare and love as solution) she wanted to impart and what mythologies (other than Ghibli) she was tapping into to tell this story.

[María Sánchez]

DNF

I hate to do this but this book is unbearable.

The writing style, the zi, zir nouns that are used sometimes, the complicated world from which there is no explanation of, you don't know how to imagine what's happening or how things look or what are they talking about...there's no explanation of anything!

I don't doubt the world building might be good but to me if you can not make others imagine it you failed as a writer.

I have not reached far, only a few pages in and there is a part of me that tells me that it migth get better but it was SO hard to understand anything that I had to give up.

I don't know if I will give this another chance....

I'm surprised for the rating...

[Jané Swart · Rating 3 out of 5]

Deeply convoluted and hard to follow at times. I appreciated the world building and incorporation of futuristic concepts, tho at times it felt like Johnson was trying to stuff as much futuristic themes as possible into the novel. I loved the relationship between Nadi and Freida as well as the concept of made gods and how they expand and grow.

I will say tho, I have never read anything like this before and am unsure if I ever will again.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first rated this as a 3-3.5, but now I’m thinking 3.5-4, on the strength of the worldbuilding alone. But when it comes to the overall story I might be in agreement with Kirkus Reviews this time: “Filled with beautiful prose vignettes but a confusing and tedious narrative nonetheless.”

A fantastical novel set in humankind’s future, this is a story within a story: our protagonist, Freida, explaining her life to the war god Nameren she was sent to kill (and will more than likely kill her first. But, like in many folktale set ups, he likes a good yarn! :P)

Freida is a foundling who looks human but is in fact constructed AI. She was found in this story’s all-important library, which is more like an archives on drugs, as librarians collect information by communing with material gods. They also enforce, or sometimes debate, the status quo of their society.

There’s “Tierans,” Lunars and Martians who still live in the Milky Way, but humans have also colonized new star systems and enforced our usual methods of oppression. It’s a complicated web of who’s who, and Johnson employed enough nuance that most groups and people aren’t completely angelic or demonic.

Freida’s story begins when she’s contacted by Joshua, who is looking for a legal argument to stop a “war ritual” (aka war) against his people. But the Library is more in status quo territory here. I suppose it’s meant to be “The Purge” writ large, but the whole premise did have me arching my eyebrow a little bit. I know in real life, human society finds all sorts of ways to justify violence, but we’re not usually so on the nose about it. Maybe I could have bought into sadistic defenses if I had a far more complex understanding of the cultures involved, but Johnson doesn’t have the time to go into all of that. She has to stay distant, and philosophical, because a deep dive into these cultures isn’t the point.

The point is that Freida has a hidden destiny. She starts to go down that path when aiding Joshua, and then being blackmailed to uphold the status quo. She is in training to become a librarian, after all, and other than her parent (the obviously not-for-long Head Librarian), where would she go? Who is she?

She tries to make amends with Nergui, another oppressed minority member in a similar place as Joshua, but with more twisty-turny backstory. And from here, everything feels a bit twisty-turny. The characters felt more like ideas to me, sometimes with more attention being paid to their virtual reality avatars than their actual interiority, and I didn’t find much to latch onto. Everything was made even more confusing by the third-person interruptions at the beginning of each chapter, where we check in with Freida and Nameren from The Future (also, in the audiobook, Nameren’s dialogue is narrated by JD Jackson and everything else goes to Bahni Turpin.)

Maybe what happened is that Johnson wrote THE SIMARRILION when she really shoulda started with THE HOBBIT. :P It’s a fascinating world/galaxy, but the lack of fully realized characters, and explored humanity in anything beyond Freida’s bildungsroman, perhaps, was off-putting. It’s a shame, because underneath all of the grandiosity, I think Johnson had some interesting societal things to say.

[Kelsey Rhodes · Rating 2 out of 5]

2.25/5 stars! The title of this book pulled me in and I was hoping to get something along the lines of Pagemaster or Sorcery of Thorns. Unfortunately, the book that is promoted as YA sci-fi, the story was all over the place and it had Inception-levels of intricacies that were far too complex to keep track of. Hardcore sci-fi fans may be able to get through this better than I did.

[Nathalie Bookwurm · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF

[Konica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know how I feel about the book. One review I read said, "This was a challenging and unusual book," and that's pretty accurate. In the beginning, I didn't know if I would make it through to the end, and by the end I felt like I didn't completely understand what happened.
The book had the potential to be something I enjoyed because the world is fascinating and the MC is interesting, something didn't click for me.

[Dakota Hudelson-Zipper · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Library of Broken Worlds is a thought-provoking novel set in a futuristic intergalactic system held at peace by the Treaty enforced by the Library. Freida, the novel’s protagonist, lives and was born in the Library, though the circumstances of her birth were very unusual: the Library itself birthed her, a fact that causes some in its political system to regard her as no more than “secondary artificial intelligence.”

The novel opens with Freida locked in conversation with one of the novel’s gods, Nameren. There are eight gods in the universe, though only five of them are regularly referenced in the novel. Nameren is the God of the Maham, a race of people depicted as obsessed with war and harming the citizens of a nearby planet, Miuri. It is made clear from the outset that Freida was created for one purpose: killing gods. Nameren says he will not allow her to kill him, and she claims that deicide isn’t her intention. Instead, she wishes to talk to him and tell him stories. The rest of the novel is a series of stories about her life and journey that she relays to Nameren, who listens and responds to the stories, ever cognizant of the possibility this is all a ploy to kill him.

There are no regular chapter breaks in this book; instead, readers are treated to a few pages of Freida’s direct dialogue and interactions with Nameren before shifting into chapter-length stories that Freida tells to the god.

For much of the novel, Freida is working with one of two visitors to the Library: Joshua and Nergui.

Joshua is there on a scholarship, and he is attempting to argue a fundamental change to the intergalactic Treaty that would enable his people, the Tierrans, and Nergui’s people, the Miurians, to free themselves from ongoing exploitation at the hands of nearby planets bent on the colonization and subjugation of the Tierrans and Miurians. Though Tierra and Miuri are in separate galaxies connected only indirectly by a mysterious portal known as a tesseract, their people face many of the same systems of oppression.

Nergui is a refugee and aspiring clergy from her planet and galaxy, and she has come to the Library for sanctuary and in search of information to help her people.

Freida helps her friends by navigating the Library in search of information beneficial to their causes. The Library is not a collection of books; it is a massive network of ever-changing caves and tunnels that are the literal arteries and veins of four of the universe’s gods. These gods reside in/are the Library, and Librarians find information about the world by communing with the avatars of the gods deep in their caves, sometimes under perilous conditions. The job of Librarian is dangerous, and many have died or become lost in the tunnels as they attempted to commune with the gods.

The precise circumstances of Freida’s birth are highly unusual, and because of them, she is subject to discriminatory behavior from some in the Library. Freida wasn’t born so much as found, as a baby, deep in the tunnels of the Library. She was discovered by the Head Librarian, Nadi, which causes her to be at the center of and adjacent to a lot of political turmoil through the novel. As a “neo-progressive” political faction of the Library begins to gain power, Freida’s very freedom is politicized and put at risk.

Gender and sexuality are beautifully fluid in this world, and there isn’t a whiff of anybody discriminating against, hating, or invalidating someone else over their gender identity or sexual orientation. Most non-binary characters use ze/zir pronouns, and they are also used any time gender identity is unknown. Nadi is non-binary and uses ze/zir, so they’re on the page a decent amount.

The first twenty pages or so are a bit of an adjustment to Johnson’s writing style, and not just if one is getting used to non-gendered pronouns. There are multiple references to other planets, galaxies, and gods, and the general vernacular of the universe is specialized. Readers might find themselves flipping back to the extremely helpful map at the beginning of the novel to help them understand how the various political factions interact, and to help them figure out if a particular name in the novel belongs to a god, person, planet, or city. Furthermore, this novel might expand one’s vocabulary as Johnson often chooses words and phrases that are as unusual as they are beautiful. I finally gave in and looked up “cenote” when context clues weren’t enough for me to decode the meaning on my own.

Characters experience and discuss racism, colonialism, imperialism, sexual assault, and more. Readers will find themselves considering nuances related to all of these issues thanks to how they are depicted in this futuristic world. I loved The Library of Broken Worlds, and I sincerely hope there will be a sequel!

[Gemma Best · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just wasn't for me. I like the idea of it but found the story difficult to follow and confusing

[Asia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Frieda was born from the God Imeja of the Library and was raised in the library. All her life she was expecting to become a Librarian, but that's not the path she is destined to take. She was created for one thing: defeating the Nameren, the oldest and bloodiest God. Nadi, her parent and head librarian, protected her from her destiny and those who would see her used as best as zir could, but there's only so much a parent can do. When she agrees to help her lover with his fight for freedom for his people, she starts down a slippery slope that will lead her through the most dangerous parts of the Library and to where she is meant to be.

I'll admit, this book took me a little to get into. It wasn't what I was expecting in that it wasn't a tale about a fabulous magical library that sits between worlds and protects the universe, or something like that. It was a book about war and injustice and what people will do to hold on to power. Yes the Library was still there, but it's knowledge was gained from communion with the God's and it was more a political landscape than that of a sanctuary.
The use of ze/zir pronouns as default before learning someone's preferred ones also threw me through a loop. It admitedly did my head in in the first few pages before I got used to it. Let's not forget that one character that has to be different and use em/eir pronouns instead. But I got over this, eventually.

Once I got into the book it was a very interesting read. There are no chapters, and instead the tales are broken up by Frieda being pulled back to the present with her communion with the Nameren. The tales are her recounting her life to the Nameren, telling him a story, and I was pulled in and wanted to know more as much as the God did. The world itself was interesting, even if we barely saw much of the universe outside the Library. I learnt before midway that there was just some things I wasn't going to understand but I didn't let that ruin the story for me.

Towards the end I'll admit that the flow of the story got more convoluted and more rushed. I suppose this is because of the virus that has infected Frieda and the Nameren's communion and is slowly killing her so it makes sense in that way, but made it a little difficult for the reader to follow. It also left it feeling slightly incomplete; it felt like part of Frieda's story was missing. Not to mention a couple of unanswered questions What actually happened to Frieda in the drop? I thought it may have been some sort of disection but others seem to think sexual assult. What happened to Joshua and his people? Nergüi? Imeja? Are the corals still alive? and I feel like I'm still not exactly sure how Frieda came to be in the Nameren's temple, in what seems to be a hidden room, to commune with him. But oh well, I did resign myself to not understanding it all!

Despite what sounds like a lot of complaints, I really did enjoy reading this book. I picked this up expecting something very different, something more YA, but was pleasantly surprised with what it turned out to be. It was a very interesting concept to read and I'm glad it has ended up on my shelves.

[Nathan Lagerstedt]

The Library of Broken Worlds, by Alaya Dawn Johnson, is a beautiful and compelling story with themes as winding and interconnected as the tunnels within the library. Themes such as love, loss, peace, war, oppression and freedom are all themes the book ensnares within its literary web, as well as a thematic current that runs between all of them, the idea of identity. Throughout the story, we are constantly reminded of the fact that Friede is in an existential limbo, not too alive but far from dead. However, it’s not just her. Nergüi’’s identity as a disciple and Joshua’s identity as a Tierran are core to not just their character, but also the overarching narrative. However, that’s not the only instance of identity being central. This book is an openly queer story, one of which is Friede’s caretaker, Nadi, who uses neopronouns. Any character who talks before identifying themselves are also referred to with neopronouns. There’s also Friede’s romantic relationship with Nergüi. All of this is underpinned by both the quantity of other themes, as well as its inspiration from Central American mythos. Along with the themes of identity, there is a notable theme of the importance of the senses, namely colors. All the gods of the library have specific colors, sights, smells, etc. that are related to them (for instance one of them is associated with the smell of algae). All of this coalesces into the gods feeling, in a sense, ‘godlier’, than they would otherwise. They all have dominions, are all powerful, but are also purely logical. The gods are ai, yet even when operating under pure logic, they seemingly feel. The gods in this story aren’t as far removed from the beings they created.
Overall, The Library of Broken Worlds’ place in science-fiction/fantasy is one of importance. We see within it a glimpse into the future of science fiction writing, and there are many great pieces of writing as there are problem points. The major problem points from this story that I had were, in short, a lack of clarity. There are a lot of great premises and worldbuilding, but also many of the narrative elements of worldbuilding could be better explained. The story starts In Media Res, and while it does explain many things during the entirety of the book, there’s so much that is left vague or generally unknown that it goes from being partly hidden away lore that we have to interpret and more like a canyon of ideas that lead to nothing but a shallow river. Again, the ideas that are explained are interesting and all feel unique, it’s just that it feels like there are many ideas that didn’t get enough explanation that hurts the overall quality of the work. To summarize, The Library of Broken Worlds is a wholly unique science-fiction story that gives a glimpse into the future of the genre. While it has its flaws, the story is immensely compelling and is as good of a read as it can be.

[Lilifane · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a challenging and unusual book.
I love when authors choose a unique way to tell a story, and I have the utmost respect for Alaya Dawn Johnson for what she achieved with this book.
This story and the way it is told are definitely unique. Firstly, it is a love letter to story-telling itself. There are stories within stories, metaphors within metaphors. I loved the references to stories in our world, especially Spirited Away. I was so happy when I recognized it here. And the way we experience the plot while the protagonist is telling the story to a god, reminded me a lot of 1001 Arabian Nights.
It is challenging because we, the readers, are dropped into an unusual world without much guidance and have to figure out how it works on our own. The world is super fascinating, with a society with very rich and elaborate religions, cultures, political factions and a vast and mysterious setting and history. But you have to use all your brain power to try and understand it. Good luck.
The writing is beautiful, but it not only helps create a fantastic atmosphere, it also adds to the confusion. I had to reread parts several times because I was so lost in the prose that I didn't grasp the meaning of what I was reading. And most of the time it still went over my head, and I just had to accept that this world and setting are too abstract to fully understand them.
As for the plot, I loved the first half of it. The life at the library, the characters and their dynamics, the trial and the mysteries surrounding the past were all very intriguing.
I was hoping to gain understanding as I progressed with the reading, but the opposite was the case. The scope got bigger, the world building became more confusing, and the plot all over the place. It shifted to an epic love story, which I did enjoy because of all the gender queerness and diversity, but the plot points I was most interested in were dropped and never picked up again. I understand what happened, and it had an impact, but sadly it happened off-page.
The ending, unfortunately, was not as satisfying as I hoped it would be after having worked for it so hard.
I still really enjoyed the reading experience overall, and I am glad I read this book. I just don't know if I would recommend it to a broad audience.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

A big thanks to YABC for providing an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is so complicated, in the best way possible. And I loved every second of it.

The Library of Broken Worlds by Alaya Dawn Johnson is YA fantasy/sci-fy novel that features a god wanting to kill a girl. Frieda is a daughter of the library, a legendary place that help facilitate peace between the three systems. But not everything is as it seems, as the library holds a great many secrets that only Frieda can harvest. Her world changes after she meets Joshua and Nergüi, two important key figures in her transformation. Though they only see their self-preservation above none other. And the only way to save themselves, is for Feida to journey into the depths of the library and make enemies with a war god.

This book had me at library. I am a sucker for just about any story that features a library. And I mostly blame that on account of my love for Victoria Schwab's The Archived and Geneveive Cogman's The Invisible Library. And the fact that Johnson rose the stakes with the added bonus of war god just made it all the better.

Though I will say, at times I found myself becoming quite disoriented with the setting changes and time skips. As we often hop from Freida's chats with the god, to then her time with Joshua and Nergüi. But I overall loved the flow of the plot, as it created a lulling narrative that came from Freida's own mouth.

At the end of it all, The Library of Broken Worlds is this: A love letter to what makes us human, in the harshest and (rightfully so) criticizing light. And I am all here for it.

[Frida]

DNF at page 60. SO confusing. Can’t say I recommend unless you want to waste your time on nonsense that I can’t even decipher. The 60 pages I did read had me losing braincells trying to decode that shite.

Like at some point Frieda got graped but not? Like her soul? Like whaaat. And also she went to a temple but got mixed into a stomach of an evil god? Then she and her.. boyfriend? (Whom we get absolutely no introduction to) is studying some war in a library? Then we jump ahead of time to some weird dramatic conversation? Chat what is going on😭🙏

[O.D.]

Very curious to if this is going to be a YA version of The Library At Mount Char.

[Elena Miesel · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Library of Broken Worlds is a Science-Fiction novel by Alaya Dawn Johnson. In this Novel, we are seeing through the eyes of an unnamed girl in communication with an ancient War God. The stories that she is telling to this god are about the book’s main protagonist, Frieda. In the beginning, Frieda is born within the entrails of one of the Library’s four Material gods. The library is a system that lies between two other star systems, the way to travel between the Library and the other systems is by using a specific type of gateway called Tesseracts. When Frieda was born, she was found by Head Librarian Nadi. Nadi raised Frieda until zir eventual death. Young Frieda had discovered many tunnels that were within the Library and didn’t hesitate to explore them. When she explored these passageways, she communicated with the various material gods including the one that had brought her to this world. Unfortunately, someone gets in her way. Unlike Nadi, this guy named Quinn had seen Frieda as not a person but as an object and potentially rouge AI. This is because those who are created from within the Library are pieces of technology made by the gods called Secondary AIs. Further into the story when Frieda is older, she meets a boy named Joshua and develops an interest in him. Joshua mentions serious disputes that have been going on between his people and the people from other systems, the disputes could possibly lead to his people getting in serious danger. Frieda doesn’t want any of this to happen to the boy so on his behalf, she fights for him as much as she can. Throughout the entire story, Frieda encounters many unique divinities, even the Past, the Present, and The future. The further she travels, the more she will have to learn, and the more that she will discover.
A few details that I really liked in this story is that it implemented genderqueer characters such as Nadi and the Bush Elders. The addition of these characters really make this very unique and inclusive, it just adds a lot in my opinion. Another factor I really enjoyed was the worldbuilding of this universe. It’s well put together, very mesmerizing, and it takes place in space and space has always been one of my favorite things. The story is very creative when it uses similes and metaphors, I don't have too much to say about that but I just want to point it out because it was so creative.
Some things that I really didn’t like about this story is that it is very in depth in detail to the point Dawn gets sidetracked. The story tries for a very short time to stick with the story but it immediately goes to an unnecessarily descriptive detail about the most minor thing. That includes description of the setting, objects, other characters, and anything that you could think of at the top of your head. Another thing that I wish Dawn had implemented was a pronunciation guide for the names of things and people mentioned in the story. I’m an English speaker and writer and I have noticed a lot of special letters that I’m not too familiar with. Having no guide provided to pronounce the different words just took away from the story and made it less interesting as a book because we would have to stop and try to word out something only under a short period of time. My final dislike about this book is that Dawn is needlessly descriptive about a Minotaur’s anatomy. I think it would be best if I keep it there.
“The opening was narrow and dark. Fear flooded me: buried me so deep, no one could ever find me if I got lost or hurt. This is why librarians had to undergo years of training to gain access to the tunnels. I wasn’t allowed here, but Nadi and I had an understanding. I never told zir anything directly, and ze had never forbade me from exploring the world I had been born to.” (pg. 11.) This is my favorite passage because it is really good at describing the setting and could awaken the reader's emotions, including my own. When a setting is described in the right way, it fully immerses me into the story and I can’t take my hands off the book. The needlessly specific descriptions about different things in the story are a turn-off for me though and just take away from that immersion.
I would rate this book three stars because I didn’t hate it nor did I really love it. I would personally recommend this book for those who like bending their minds and like a confusing novel. I would also recommend this to those who like a good political fantasy novel and those who are large space fanatics. I wouldn’t recommend this to people who dislike highly complicated stories and like staying on one singular plot. Overall this book was not one of my best reads but it is very fascinating.

[Susanna Kanto · Rating 3 out of 5]

Seventeen-year-old Freida has lived her whole life exploring the tunnels of the Library, the celestial peacekeeper of the three systems. As the daughter of a Library god, she has unique access to the information stored in the depths of the Library. When she meets Joshua, a mortal boy desperate to save Tierra, and Nergüi, a disciple of a persecuted religious minority, she decides to break ranks with the gods and help them. For that, she must kill the bloodiest of gods. But first, she will tell him her story.

The Library of Broken Worlds is a science fiction novel set in a far-future society with its (apparently AI?) gods, planetary wars, and philosophical musings about multiverses. The concept was certainly interesting, but I felt the execution was lacking.

The worldbuilding was complex and difficult to follow, despite the narrative having tons of exposition. After the first 70 pages, I still had no idea what was going on and what the story was supposed to be about. I expected a library to have books, but that was not the case. How the library functioned wasn’t fully explained at any point, and what the “material gods” were was only explained towards the end of the book – and I still don’t know whether they were supposed to be some sort AI too complex for human understanding or something else entirely.

This is most likely due to my own ignorance of the genre conventions, as I have not read this type of far-future speculative fiction before. Someone who is more into the genre will probably find the book more easily approachable. I had hoped that this book would work as a gateway to the genre, but unfortunately, I can’t recommend it for that purpose.

I also found the characters underdeveloped. It might have made sense in Freida’s case since she isn’t fully human, but in the end, she was the most interesting of the characters. Her determination to show her humanity and her self-discovery made her an intriguing character. All the other characters, however, seemed to exist solely for the plot. Freida’s relationships first with Joshua and later with Nergüi happened at lightning speed. She meets them, and in the next scene they are already together. There was little to no chemistry between the romantic couples, and no information on how and why the relationships came about.

The book also had too many plotlines. At first, Freida’s goal is to become a librarian. For this end, she must compete against several other students to become a novice librarian. (As a side note, this part of the book felt very young adult, whereas the rest of the book reads like adult science fiction.) This competition plotline is quickly forgotten, as Freida reaches her goal early on in the story. From there, the focus shifts to a law suit she wants to help Nergüi win, and then to preventing a war that threatens to destroy the worlds. I think either the plot should have been streamlined or else the book should have been expanded into a trilogy. As a trilogy, the different plotlines could have been developed further, and the worldbuilding would have had space to expand more organically.

I also didn’t care for the ending. The whole book seemed to be heading towards one resolution, and what happened in the end felt rushed and undeserved.

I went back and forth between giving this book three or four stars, but in the end, I decided to give it three stars. The writing was good and the worldbuilding was intriguing, but unfortunately this book simply wasn’t for me. However, if you enjoy science fiction books with complex worldbuilding and intricate politics, you’ll probably enjoy this book a lot more than I did.

[Jess · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read as part of my challenge to read the 2024 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction shortlist.

The Library of Broken Worlds is a difficult one to review because I don't quite know how to talk about it when there's still a fair amount in the text I didn't completely understand. Alaya Dawn Johnson is not interested in holding her readers' hands, we're thrown into this world and expected to catch up as we go which, for the most part, I was able to do, but there's undoubtedly stuff I still missed.

At the heart of this story is Freida, a girl who is also an AI born from the Library and raised by Head Librarian, Nadi. She becomes something of a Shaherazade figure as she tells her story to a war god on the verge of waking in this science fantasy tale that reads a little like if N.K. Jemisin wrote Lirael.

There are lots of cool ideas in this novel, which is ultimately a story about the lies institutions tell to make the crimes they want to commit appear just. This a tale of Freida and the friends she makes looking for evidence in the Library's archive to support a legal argument as to why a war - or, really, a genocide - shouldn't be given the Library's blessing, and when it was focused on the legal case I was at-the-edge-of-my-seat invested.

For me personally, though, I do think this book could have been edited down ever so slightly. There are some beautiful turns of phrase and it's very much a novel that rewards patience - it's no bad thing for a book to be a challenge to read if that's its aim, and I do think that is the case here - but it still took me three months to read and, by the end of it, I was so ready to be done with it despite the fact that I was enjoying it.