A Stranger in the Citadel, by Tobias S. Buckell

Once again, I have been suckered in by a premise involving librarians in danger. Sadly, Tobias S. Buckell’s A Stranger in the Citadel fails to live up to the promise of the idea that librarians survive in a world that will burn anyone caught with a book or who demonstrates literacy. On the one hand, it’s full of too much detail to evoke the feel of folklore, where plot holes are readily forgiven as long as the story hits the right beats. On the other, there’s too little detail to give the impression of a fully-formed world for us readers to get immersed in.

Our protagonist is Lilith, the daughter of a powerful lord of the desert city of Ninetha. She is used to a privileged life. She never has to worry about having enough to eat or drink. Her only occupation is prestigious military and rifle training. And she is so naive that, when she encounters a condemned librarian who wanders in from the desert, Lilith hopes that she can help the stranger avoid being burned to death. Her fascination with the librarian—who of course calls himself Ishmael—and her curiosity about a hidden book guarded by her father and siblings turns out to be a catalyst for a violent and long-overdue revolution. Lilith manages to escape from Ninetha with Ishmael, only to struggle against lack of food and direction, the realization that she had no clue what was really going on in her father’s city, and a pack of armed soldiers sent to prevent Lilith from returning at the head of a vengeful army.

A Stranger in the Citadel was much more interesting once Lilith and Ishmael headed out into the desert. For a child who was raised to hate the written word, Lilith is very curious about what Ishmael knows about the wider world. We get hints about her world’s past through the names of disguised place names (Nudasi, for example, where the inhabitants plant cherry trees in honor of their radically transparent god, Washtun) and a wild trip to the edge of the world. More interesting is the malfunctioning archangel that has been traveling across the world in an attempt to wipe out Ishmael and anyone he might have shared his secrets with.

The plot lurches between a little too slow and far too fast and there is little beyond what I’ve mentioned to explain how Lilith’s world came to be. I was reminded of A Canticle for Liebowitz more than once but without the strong sense of cyclical history Miller achieved in that book. Humans can’t help but be curious, can’t help but disrupt egalitarian systems to get a little more material comfort or power for themselves, and can’t help but pass on what we learn to future generations. A Stranger in the Citadel is more optimistic than A Canticle for Liebowitz, but its hopefulness doesn’t make up for the pacing and setting issues.