Bookburners. Season 1 / written by Max Gladstone, Margaret Dunlap, Mur Lafferty, Brian Francis Slattery ; illustrated by Mark Weaver and Jeffrey Veregge.
Summary: "Magic is real, and hungry. It's trapped in ancient texts and artifacts, and only a few who discover it survive to fight back. Detective Sal Brooks is a survivor. She joins a Vatican-backed black-ops anti-magic squad--Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum--and together they stand between humanity and the magical apocalypse. Some call them the Bookburners. They don't like the label"--Amazon.com.
The critically acclaimed urban fantasy about a secret team of agents that hunts down dangerous books containing deadly magic--previously released serially online by Serial Box, now available in print for the first time!
Magic is real, and hungry. It's trapped in ancient texts and artifacts, and only a few who discover it survive to fight back. Detective Sal Brooks is a survivor. She joins a Vatican-backed black-ops anti-magic squad--Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum--and together they stand between humanity and the magical apocalypse. Some call them the Bookburners. They don't like the label.
Supernatural meets The Da Vinci Code in a fast-paced, kickass character driven novel (previously published serially at SerialBox.com/Serials/Bookburners) chock-full of magic, mystery, and mayhem, written collaboratively by a team of some of the best writers working in fantasy.
"Created by Max Gladstone."
"Originally published in e-serial format online"--Title page verso.
"Magic is real, and hungry. It's trapped in ancient texts and artifacts, and only a few who discover it survive to fight back. Detective Sal Brooks is a survivor. She joins a Vatican-backed black-ops anti-magic squad--Team Three of the Societas Librorum Occultorum--and together they stand between humanity and the magical apocalypse. Some call them the Bookburners. They don't like the label"--Amazon.com.
This volume collects the first season of the online serial fiction project Bookburners in print format, consisting of 16 episodes, with each episode being written by one of four writers. The use of television terminology is appropriate not only for the structure of the book, but also for the overall content and feel of the series. The story follows a team of occult investigators tasked by the Vatican with fighting demons as well as collecting and containing magical artifacts. The focus on characters' personal relationships as well as the ways in which these demonic threats range from the abstractly sinister to the slightly comedic will make comparisons to Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its many television descendants almost inevitable for readers. However, Bookburners has all of the positive qualities of a good television series, such as a fun narrative and engaging characters, and the print format allows for visuals well beyond the constraints of a television budget. This collection (and the series as a whole) is recommended for those looking for a breezy, entertaining, and exciting fantasy read.--Keep, Alan Copyright 2016 Booklist
Author notes provided by Syndetics
Max Gladstone is the author of the Hugo-nominated Craft Sequence , which Patrick Rothfuss called "stupefyingly good." The sixth book, Ruin of Angels , was released September 2017. Max's interactive mobile game Choice of the Deathless was nominated for the XYZZY Award, and his critically acclaimed short fiction has appeared on Tor and in Uncanny Magazine , and in anthologies such as XO Orpheus: Fifty New Myths and The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales . John Crowley described Max as "a true star of 21st-century fantasy." Max has sung in Carnegie Hall and was once thrown from a horse in Mongolia.