I'm In Love I'm In Love And I Don't Care Who Know's It

Oh my goodness people, I have fallen head over heels in love, I had heard good things, seen the attractive cover so I thought what is there to lose, let's give it a try.  I opened it up and by page three I was hooked, by page 11 in love, by the end of the first chapter I forgot the rest of the world existed and just wanted to keep reading!  What is this book that has stolen my heart?  Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines the first in his Magic ex Libris series.  This book (and hopefully the rest of the series) is a book written by a geeky book lover, about a geeky book lover, for geeky book lovers.  As I am apologetically a geeky book lover this was right up my ally.  Here is a quick synopsis before I get all super gushy on you (don't you love how I say quick and then type a zillion pages worth)  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Isaac is a libriomancer, a person who has the ability to pull things from books (OH MY GOSH HOW COOL IS THAT...must contain psychosis until later).  For example, if he felt like flying he could reach into Peter Pan and pull out a handful of pixie dust and think happy thoughts.  There are a bunch of rules like you can only pull out something that would fit through a book (so no flying cars), no living things (which has already been broken), and certain books are locked so that an incurable zombie plague can't get accidentally released (think Mira Grants Newsflesh series). Ok so these are the basic rules of libriomancy.  At the start of the book Isaac has been banned from using magic because on his last mission he almost burned himself out and dangerously weakened the boundaries between books and reality, he is pretty accepting of this, recognizing his mistakes and the danger he put himself and others into by behaving so rashly (what a hero who can actually acknowledge his lack of perfection...swoon).  He is allowed to remain a part of the organization of Porters that is aware and works with libriomancy.  The Porters were founded by Johannes Gutenburg (yep that Gutenburg) who discovered that the shared belief in a printed book made libriomancy possible.  Isaac is now a cataloger who goes through books and finds potentially useful or harmful objects and puts them in a database.  While he is doing this he is attacked by vampires he identifies as sparklers (or Sanguinarius Meyerii).  He uses his magic to protect himself, and is saved when his spider bursts into flames (did I forget to mention he has a burning spider named Smudge who can sense bad guys?) and a dryad
named Lena comes to his aid.  All kinds of crazy goodness ensue (seriously read this book, I have to limit the details or we will be here all night), but essentially it comes down to the fact that something is killing vampires and in return they are fighting back.  More chaos and awesomeness happen and we learn that Gutenburg has disappeared and his unstoppable automatons are under the control of this mysterious enemy who is using them to wreak havoc. More action and so many mentions of awesome books and geeky shows and movies!  The bad guy turns out to be an ex-libriomancer who's memories had been blocked after his brother had been killed by vampires and he threatened to go public, but had come back after a head injury.  He ends up writing a book and distributing it out so that he can personalize his own weapons and take out all the vampires and Porters.  An epic battle of books, magic, idea's and inner turmoil ensue and the bad guy is finally destroyed.  While investigating all of this Isaac learns some things about Gutenburg and the Porters that is a bit disturbing, mostly that they (Gutenburg especially) are running with no checks or balances and are taking great liberties to ensure the secrecy of the world of libriomancy.  The book ends with Isaac being reinstated and getting his coveted research position.  His goal is to find an ancient nameless evil which is the true mission of the Porters.  Thus ends book one and my rabid wait for book two to come out in paper back.
So that was pretty all over the place, but there was just so much going on that if I tried to sum it up, well yeah, just go read the book. Some random thoughts on why I am so in love with this book/series.  It mentions a zillion books and uses them in such interesting ways it makes me look at all my books differently.

 Now every time I pick up a book I think, hmmm what could I pull out of here, what would I use it for, if a crazed werewolf jumped me right now, do I have the right book to pull out a gun with a silver bullet in it (if it is the type of werewolf that can be put down by a silver bullet.).  Mostly it is just one more excuse to surround myself with books at all times.  I love the different ways a fictional creature can come to our world (usually a careless libriomancer gets bitten or infected when reaching into a book) and then they breed, or infect others.  I love how they are all classified according to the book they come from (the sparklers being vampires from Stephanie Meyers books) and that they behave and can be killed or contained only how it is described in the books (you can't stake a Meyers vampire, but you could stake a Stokers vampire.  I think overall the best part of the book was that to be a good libriomancer you had to read and love a ton of books, your greatest strength is knowing what books contain which objects, characters, and rules and then having the creativity to use it. I liked how different people liked different books, and that they tended to use those particular books when fighting, for example Isaac loves sci-fi and fantasy and would constantly be using laser guns and
swords, while another character is very into music and tends to pull magic instruments as her tools of choice. Aside from the awesome book stuff, references are made to Star Trek, Firefly, and Dr. Who which makes this little geeky girls heart go pitter patter.  I liked how there are rules to this world, making everything seem plausible, but how the author was smart enough to leave himself an out for most things for in case he needs to change his mind later.  Last but not least I love the sense of humor that is infused throughout the whole book.  There is some dark stuff happening, and some serious thought provoking moments, but it really never strays into the overly angsty, overly preachy side of things, which is a hard balance.  I am totally stoked to read the next one (where in they tackle the dilemma of e-readers) and hope it is a bibliophile yummy as this one was.  Please please please go read this book, I give it 10 out of 10 magic flaming spiders.

If you could pull anything out of a book, what would it be?  How great an excuse is this for keeping at least 5 books on you at all times?  Does this make you look at books in a whole new way?