Let me start by saying again, as I did for the previous books in the series, that I love The Librarians. I think the show is better than it has any right to be, and a large part of that is due to the great casting. The movies were good as well, but I think the show really took the overall story world to a new level. I'm glad to be able to read these books, though I wish they were a little more clear about where they fit into the series. This one pretty clearly happens after the end of season 3, though beyond that, I can't say for sure. And while the book does attempt to give some basic understanding of the overall setting and backstory of the Library and the Librarians, I think this book is best read by someone who has seen at least the TV show. Knowledge of the movies isn't really necessary for this book.

Now to the story itself. I liked that the Librarians mostly worked together in this book; the way they play off each other is a big part of why the show is so good. I didn't care for the first chunk of the book that dealt with the end of an ongoing case. While that kind of thing is common in an episodic format like this, it seemed to drag on way too long. I just wanted to get onto the main story. Something I noticed more in this book is that the characters aren't coming through all that well. I think the reason I thought they were before was simply because I'd watched the show recently and could apply the recent memories of their personalities to the book. But the further I get from watching the show, the more I realize that, absent of knowledge of the show, the characters are fairly 2-dimensional. Add to that the way that the audiobook narrator tends to make everyone sound like they're almost always scared or unhappy in some way, and it just wasn't a very enjoyable read. In the end, the next time I go back through the Librarians movies and series, I'll probably read through these books again along the way; however, I'll most likely read them myself, instead of listening to the audiobooks. Though the books aren't as good as the show overall, I do think that fans of the show who are sad it's over might enjoy having the extra "episodes" from these books. ( )

This was really, really hard to get into. The show isn't on any longer (I think, unless they get revived again...) and so it's been awhile since I watched Baird, Cassandra, Stone, and Ezekiel (and Jenkins) save the world, a lot.

Once I got into it though, it was just like another Librarians episode, which is always nice.

It started with a short bit of a Phantom of the Opera adventure that was pretty normal for the Librarians.

Then they get into their big honkin' story of the book. There were snakes of all sorts, serpents, and Brotherhood of the Serpents. There was also Leprechauns which was cool (as long as they're not the Leprechauns of the horror movie series I'm good with them). And the Librarians meet a lady w ho may nor may not be marked for death.

As usual there's a lot going on (so, so much), but, also things slowly come into focus and thankfully there's no Flynn for most of the book.

There was a tiny bit of 'Cassandra may not be totally straight' subtext in there, but, not enough in my estimation. I wish that they'd just have given her a small multi-episode sort of story line instead of the one sorta wishy washy episode. Ah well.

I received this book via Netgalley thanks to Macmillan-Tor/Forge. ( )

Character voices were spot-on, which made me realize how very often Ezekiel says "mate." The Serpent Brotherhood is always a great opponent, though I did find this particular leader to be lacking. As Stone said, he's no Dulaque. There were enough twists to this story that while some seemed obvious others I missed until the very last moment which made for a satisfying read. Good tie-in novels are fun and this book was quite a bit of fun.

#TheLibrariansAndThePotOfGold #NetGalley ( )