Synopsis:
From the author of the internationally bestselling The Book of Doors, another fantastical, stand-alone novel in which a trio of seemingly everyday people are members of a secret society tasked with finding and protecting hidden magical objects—ordinary items with extraordinary properties.
The world of unknowable objects—magical items that most people have no idea possess powers—has been quiet for decades, but the three current members of a secret society have remained watchful, meeting every six months in the basement of a bookshop in London. They are pledged to protect their archive of magical items hidden away, safe from the outside world—and the world safe from them. But when Frank Simpson, the longest-standing member of the Society of Unknowable Objects, hears of a new artifact coming to light in Hong Kong, he sends Magda Sparks—author by day and newest member—to investigate.
Within hours of arriving in Hong Kong, Magda is facing death and danger, confronted by a professional killer who seems to know all about unknowable objects, specifically one that was stolen from him a decade before. Magda is forced to flee, using an artifact that not even the rest of the Society knows about.
Returning to London, Magda learns hers is not the only secret being kept from the other two members. And that the most pernicious secret is about the nature of the Society’s mission. Her discoveries will lead her on a perilous journey, across the Atlantic to the deep south of the United States, now in pursuit of not an unknowable object, but the professional killer she first faced in Hong Kong. In doing so, Magda begins to understand that there are even more in the world who are chasing these magical items, and that her own family’s legacy is tied up in keeping all these secrets under wraps.
Magic has always been too powerful to reveal to the world. But Magda will learn there might be something even more
The truth.
Review:
After the success of The Book of Doors last year, Gareth Brown is back with The Society of Unknowable Objects, a fast-paced stand-alone fantasy novel about magic in normal objects and the group of people sworn to protect the world from those very objects.
I just polished off The Book of Doors a few months ago and was thrilled to read this one a little early as well. Overall, I liked the story and attention to detail in The Book of Doors more, but there are some great scenes and action throughout his sophomore effort. If you looked at the covers of each book, you might be tempted to think this is a sequel, but as of now both books are stand alone novels.
And after reading both, I had a feeling that kind of permeated through my reading experiences — and that is the SyFy (formerly Sci-Fi) Channel, particularly from the mid-2000s to mid-2010s. There are a lot of terrible SyFy efforts like Sharknado and its many sequels, but there was a time when they actually tried to make quality shows. At the same time that Stargate SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica was airing, they made a miniseries called The Lost Room. As I worked through The Book of Doors, I was reminded of that miniseries. Now…they really don’t share a ton besides a cool concept, but the ideas and some of the feel permeated both. So with The Society of Unknowable Objects hit my email box, I was reminded again of another show – Warehouse 13. To be clear — none of this is to say these are bad things — I LOVED almost everything showing on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2006, so these comparisons just remind me of the fun I had loading them up on my Dish Network DVR and watching them when I was off work back then.
As for this book — there is a lot of fun to be had. The Society of Unknowable Objects does share some DNA with Warehouse 13, but the stakes are a little higher for this outing. There were times that I thought Brown about wrote himself into a corner with some of the magical properties of the objects in this world, but there were cleverly-written escape hatches for our characters that gave them a second (or sometimes third) life. The pacing is a little stilted, especially in the first quarter of the book, but I believe Brown may have been trying to put the audience into a false sense of security before the danger really set in for Magda and the rest of the society.
Overall, I really liked The Society of Unknowable Objects and will happily line up for whatever Brown has up his sleeve next.
Thank you to William Morrow for providing this book for review consideration through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
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