Wednesday, May 6, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Bookburners Season 5 by Max Gladstone, Mur Lafferty, Margaret Dunlap, Brian Slattery, & Andrea Phillips



Bookburners is a series from Serial Box Publishing, a publisher who specializes in publishing weekly "serials" - basically novels split up into small parts each written by a different author.  The idea is essentially to treat written works like TV seasons, with each weekly part being an "episode" and a set of episodes making up a yearly "season."  Bookburners is the one of these series I've most enjoyed, and since the publisher had been releasing episodes and seasons to one of my e-libraries, I'd kept track of it for four seasons....except Serial Box last year quit releasing episodes anywhere but its own platform, so I fell behind.  Finally I decided to splurge for the final season when I needed something likely fun to read on my birthday, and well here we are.

Bookburners began as a series in which an NY Cop Sal found herself recruited to a secret Vatican Organization devoted to suppressing outbreaks of magic in the world.  Her team - our main characters - consisted of a priest with uncertain faith, a computer hacker who was previously possessed by a technomagic cult, a woman from early 20th century China whose life is tied to a magic candle, and an archivist with a bit too much interest in studying magic - travel the world and try to keep disasters from happening on an episodic basis at first, but over the course of the past four seasons, things have grown epic in scale to the point where the status quo has shifted tremendously on numerous occasions, with relationships between our characters changing, magic shifting from a hidden secret to out in the open, and utter destruction of all on the horizon.

It's a setup that is very similar to what's been done in a lot of places (Secret Vatican Strike Force?  Drink!), but it's done so well, with the characters being so great and fun to read, that it's been a minor fave of mine.  This Season is the final one, and almost like a TV series' final season, it's about half the length of prior seasons - only 6 episodes long, which made me a bit sad.  It's a bit more focused as a result, but some of the fun is lost as it barrels towards a conclusion from its very start.

Note: Minor Spoilers for the earlier seasons in this series are inevitable in this review, but they shouldn't alter anyone's enjoyment of the earlier seasons.


-------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------
Saving the world from a batch of assholes trying to take advantage of the release of magic to satisfy their own greed took nearly all Team 3 had - in some cases, literally - but it also may not have been enough.  For the angel Hannah has returned, angry at what has been done to the world, and declared that the experiment is over....and sets cosmic wreckers upon the world.  Nothing can seemingly stop them from gobbling up reality one piece at a time, and the days of the world seem numbered.

But when the world's magic-stopping taskforces join together, Asanti comes up with a hope for saving everything, getting the seed she salvaged from the world's pillar into the Garden at the center of reality.  Unfortunately, not everyone agrees with Asanti's ideas of magic's place in the world, and a powerful secret agent - at her wits end - decides to take things into her own hands.

Soon, Team 3 will be forced into a desperate race not just against the Angelic Wreckers of reality, but against an agent as determined as they are, in order to save the world one last time.  And with their resources - such as Grace's very lifespan - almost exhausted, this might just finally be the one mission the team is unable to fulfill.....and the world may be doomed as a result.
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Bookburners had previously featured seasons that were 10-16 episodes long (S1 was 16 episodes, S2 & 3 were 13, S4 was 10 episodes long).  That length allowed for each season to feature at least a few "monster of the week" (or well, magical event of the week) type episodes in addition to the episodes that devoted themselves entirely to the season long plot arc of any particular season.  This isn't to say that these episodes weren't essential - they would generally have at least some tie in to the major season arc, and would contain important character and setting development that you couldn't really follow the series without.  But they were often moments of fresh air in between major season plot arcs - and more importantly, they were often really fun.

Season 5, like a TV series cut short for its final season, is only six episodes long and as a result, it basically cuts out those episodes.  The result is a more focused season, with basically 5 of the six episodes featuring major progress being made towards a season long plot arc - the saving of the world - and the sixth resolving to some extent one major character's multi-season long arc.  And it works really well for the most part, with everything coming together in a satisfying way to conclude the story pretty well.  Our characters remain great - I should point out that secondary team member Frances, who bounced in and out of being a major character in prior seasons, is a full time main member this time around, and she's pretty good too.  If you liked previous seasons we've these characters, you'll enjoy this one too.  And if somehow you skipped those and were reading this review to see if going back is worth it now that the ending is written, my answer would still definitely be yes: this is still mostly fun and the ways the team goes about saving the world is always creative and interesting throughout.

That said....as I hinted above, the shortening of the season and loss of breather episodes kind of takes away a lot of the fun of this series.  Prior times there was a massive change in the status quo - and we get another one here to start this season - these episodes would allow us to see really how the world is coping with the change, and seeing our characters try to deal with this was often really fun (Magic London in Season 4 is kind of a major highlight).  There's no time here for our heroes to just fight minor threats with whatever they find around them, or a magic sword, or for them to have heartfelt moments to themselves.  And I kind of missed that.

Still, I'm glad I spent the money to get a conclusion, and will miss Bookburners.  It's a good example of writing genre that takes common tropes, but makes them feel fresh and new with great character development and a lot of fun, and if the writers ever decided to return to this world, I'll be there. 
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