While I'm not ready to declare abandonment of this series, I am going to have to break-up with it for a while. It's not you, it's me. I need to spend some time with other books.

The main issue I have with this book has leaked into a problem I have with the entire series, up to this point: I really want to like it, but between roughly 25-85%, I find the book to be fairly boring and disappointingly predictable.

The premise of the series, the overlay of the project, is—at a distance—so intriguing and brimming with possibilities. The spheres/alternate worlds seem to have such potential, and a seemingly innocuous career choice as a librarian becomes a book thief and spy and transforms that title with a capital L to Librarian. Then add into that both Fae and Dragons, and you've either got a recipe for fantastic adventures or ingredients you don't intend to use properly. Every character, with the possible exception of Irene, seems to have fallen into a slump and become cardboard, one-dimensional and irritatingly predictable. Irene, while not truly one-dimensional and flat, is also predictable and lacking.

Another thing I want to address is this categorization as steampunk. This is my first foray into this genre, but I don't think it exemplifies what defines the genre itself. I'll have to try others. Other than brief mentions of long skirts, fog, zeppelins, and such, I don't get much of a steampunk feel at all. The use of magic and Language seems to push aside any actual need for gadgetry or industrial.

All-in-all, for a book whose action seems to go on and on without pause, this is a startlingly boring and monotonous story.