Haly, a clerk in the underground city that is the Libyrinth, can hear the written words in her mind. That is how she learns that the chief lybrarian is willing to sell the knowledge of the location of The Book of the Night to the Erradicants in exchange for the life of his nephew, a prince the Erradicants hold prisoner.

The Erradicants, we learn in chapter one, are the power-hungry neighbors to the Libyrinth. Their culture forbids them to read books, yet they keep their knowledge alive by singing elaborate songs. Once a year the Erradicants come to the Lybirinth to collect their toll. In exchange for letting the lybrarians alone, the Erradicants receive a certain number of books to burn.

Haly, her boss the lybrarian Selena, and Clauda, a scullery maid, run away from the Libyrinth to get The Book of the Night before the Erradicants can take it. They do find the book first, but the Erradicants are after them and take Haly prisoner. And while Selena and Clauda try to convince Selena’s mother, the queen of a neighboring country, to help them rescue Haly, Haly lives in the Erradicants’ city and learns she is, because of her gift of hearing the words, their long awaited messiah.

Libyrinth starts promisingly enough, but does not deliver. Many threads are left unresolved. For instance, the nephew whose rescuing set the story in motion, is never mentioned again. The Book of the Night? Not important either.

The characters are flat, pieces of clay who change to fit the story. And the three societies the author creates are inconsistent.

The lybrarians who run the Libyrinth do not use the books to get knowledge that could improve their lives. They just catalogue them.

The Erradicants have stunt guns and a sophisticated catapult, but are otherwise a medieval society whose most advanced means of transportation is an elephant. Yet, when a 14-year-old Erradicant-to-be sees a sophisticated console (think the Enterprise’s control panel in Star Trek) for the first time in his life, he says, "I think I can fix it. I can start with the tone capacitors...but I’ll need tools... a hand harp, pliers, and cutters and copper chording." Really?

The Erradicants also know how to vaccinate children, but they have no idea why. Yet when Haly reads from a book: "Active immunization describes the administration of all or part of a biologic agent in an effort to evoke a defensive response in the host." This same 14-year-old says, "Oh! That makes sense."

It doesn’t. I mean, the explanation makes sense. That someone from a primitive society understands this certainly doesn’t.

And don’t be fooled by the quotations from well known books that pepper the text. The quotes are great, but they are distracting and irrelevant to the story.