Genre Character of the week: Cynthia “Cyn” Rothschild

As a librarian myself, I’m always happy to see the profession represented in film, television an books, and as the even rarer breed of male librarian, that basically leaves me with Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Flynn Carsen from The Librarian franchise, and that’s about it. Until last month when I came across the Young Adult book Evil Librarian by Michelle Knudsen. Unlike Giles or Flynn however, this Librarian is no one’s friend, and is actually the villain to the books charming narrator and protagonist (and our genre character of the week) Cynthia “Cyn” Rothschild.

Cynthia is that rare gem in YA fiction, the realistically drawn teenaged girl. Yes, she does have a best friend named Annie and a crush on a boy, but past that she is portrayed as having her own interested and goals, both academic and extracurricular. Specifically she is working as the stage manager for her high school’s production of Sweeney Todd, and while balancing out her life something comes in from left field, a new Librarian named Mr. Gabriel has started working at the school and Annie has developed a crush on him.

There’s just one problem, Mr. Gabriel is (in addition to being a librarian) evil. Not a jerk, not a bad guy, but a literal Demon, and worse yet, one with his eye on Annie and possibly the entire school…

The book is a lot of fun, plays out well and doesn’t cheat, when Cyn makes a mistake she pays for it and when she does well things get a little better. A fun read.