April 17, 2012

Review of The Book on Fire



















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 existsunder 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." 

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