Sorcery of Thorns

Sorcery of Thorns is a standalone fantasy novel by Margaret Rogerson, published in 2019 by Margaret K. McElderry Books. It is set in Austermeer, a kingdom whose Great Libraries hold grimoires that whisper on the shelves, rattle their chains and turn into monsters of ink and leather when something provokes them, and where the librarians are trained to subdue them.

Elisabeth was left at one of those libraries as a foundling and has grown up among the books. She wants to train as a warden, one of the people who keep the books and the kingdom safe from each other, and her whole understanding of the world rests on a rule she has never had reason to question: that all sorcerers are evil, and that the libraries exist because of the things they made, which is the version taught in every library in the kingdom.

That certainty holds right up until a volume is destroyed under circumstances that point at her, and the only person offering to help is a sorcerer. Nathaniel Thorn is a magician with a demon servant, a ruined reputation and his own interest in what happened, and working with him means Elisabeth has to test the rule she was raised on against the evidence in front of her. The book follows the pair as they try to find out what was in the book and who wanted it gone.

Rogerson wrote the novel as a self-contained story rather than the first of a series, and it establishes Austermeer, the libraries and the warden's training Elisabeth is separated from. It is a fantasy about a rule, an institution built on it and a girl who has to decide what to do when the rule stops holding, and it is told from Elisabeth's point of view as she works out how much of her education was true.