Mythological allusions range from Arthurian, Norse (two famous ravens make frequent appearances), and biblical, plus it’s also chock full of literature references period, from The Da Vinci Code to the Moomins. Aesthetic comparisons to His Dark Materials and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell are also warranted, sharing similar narrative scope. Even so, the fantasy of The Absolute Book is darker and more ambiguous, rooted in both the mythological and the present, in the vein of writers such as Alan Gardner and Susan Cooper. Other than escapism fulfilling a major psychological need, I’d also argue that as fantasy is the oldest form of storytelling, evolving as it did from the ancient oral tradition, even the most ‘escapist’ branches of the fantasy tree-‘sword and sorcery’ for example, which is still going strong today-has things that can be applied universally.
In her review for the guardian, Nina Allan notes that “Fantastic literature is often decried for being escapist”.
Knox calls these sorts of books “arcane thrillers”, and though The Absolute Book does have a little of the arcane thriller about it-though, in this case, the object sought is as important as the journey-it is, at its heart, a literary portal fantasy. The Absolute Book is a love letter to many different things: mythology, stories, libraries, and books, especially those with scholarly heroes in search of some forbidden knowledge or object but where the journey turns out to be more important than the thing being searched for. In her native New Zealand, Elizabeth Knox is an award-winning author, an ONZM (New Zealand Order of Merit) and an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate, but The Absolute Book is her first book to be published outside New Zealand and hopefully it won’t be the last. Their journey will take them across continents and into other worlds, in search of a box whose contents could shape their fate. Drawn into this long with her are DI Jacob Berger, who’s investigating a cold case he’s sure Taryn’s involved in, and a mercurial young man known as Shift, who is definitely more than he appears to be and may not even be of this world. Something is pursuing her in search of something from that library something that’s already survived several library fires a box that doesn’t burn. Unfortunately, she could do with remembering some of it rather quickly. In the interests of self-preservation, she’s purposefully quarantined most of her memories of her childhood, including those of her beloved grandfather’s library at Princes Gate. Taryn Cornick has never been the same since her sister was murdered.
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