One of my favorite sites, the wonderfully named Biblioklept, has posted a nice review of The Book on Fire:
"Balthazar, the hero of Keith Miller’s agile
and trippy novel The Book on Fire, is a biblioklept. He comes to
Alexandria to rob the famous library, a cavernous, labyrinthine complex that
still exists—under heavy guard—in Miller’s mystical version of that ancient
Egyptian city. Miller’s Alexandria is a byzantine maze, humming with a
turn-of-the-century buzz, a kaleidoscope world that strongly reminded me of the
strange cityscapes of William Gibson or William Burroughs. . . .
"For Balthazar, books are a drug, and the
Library of Alexandria is the heady nexus point for his addiction. . . . While The
Book on Fire does have the
strong, page turning plot of a thriller, that plot exists mostly as the bones
for Miller to hang rapturous descriptions of reading and books and, best of
all, his strange Alexandria, a city of marvels."
