Rating: 
Summary: a wonderful book
Review: I agree with the above review by Mark Fantino, but was able to stomach the ending more readily than was he. However, it does stretch the suspension of disbelief. The majority of the book is wonderful: both it and Domino (also by Ross King) turn around the elusive faces of reality and are both entertaining, profound and thought-provoking. I look forward to more fiction from Mr. King.
Rating: 
Summary: Liked it rather than loved it!
Review: I am very much a fan of this kind of historical/literary thriller, so I had high expectations for the book when I spotted it on a bookstore shelf. Without going over the parallel plotlines in depth, it concerns a book finder named Isaac Inchbold and another story of the book he is trying to find. The wealth of details might have put me off, but I had jury duty when I started (and finished) the book, so I had plenty of "quiet time" to go back and forth in the book. If you don't like going back to find details, this book may not be for you.Ultimately, the stories do converge, and the ending does make sense, but it is deriative of many other similar tales. The final impact of the book is negligible, but still, if you are looking for a pleasurable historical mystery, this book will suffice. There are three much superior books in this genre that I would, however, recommend first: The Name of the Rose by Eco; An Instance of the Fingerpost by Pears; and Club Dumas by Perez-Reverte. All are both wonderful novels, but Club Dumas is probably the most accessible.
Rating: 
Summary: An Irritatingly Disappointing Waste of Time...
Review: I bought this book with high hopes. I slogged through four hundred pages of overwrought prose and recondite (and often contrived) references. Again and again I battled back the thickening boredom. I vowed not to lay the book aside because I was sure that Mr. King would bring it all together in some interesting and meaningful flourish. Gawdalmighty, was I wrong. This book is a massive and insulting waste of time. And the insult is aggravated by the showy-learned tone of the whole thing. I have never read any other books by Mr. King. And he can rest assured I never will.
Rating:
Summary: About the Great Fire¿
Review: I enjoyed what I read, but ran out of time, so I scanned the rest. But if you're put off by the historical "error" regarding the Great Fire of London in a previous review, as I was, consider this: The Great Fire of London in 1666 started in a baker's shop in Pudding Lane and reached the London Bridge. But the bridge itself was mostly untouched because of gaps on the bridge from a previous fire. It is quite believable that, in 1700, one could sit in a bookshop on the bridge that had been unaffected by the fire.
Rating:
Summary: Overwhelmed in Latin
Review: I have just completed Mr. Kings 'Ex-Libris' & I am woosey from it all. I love books & looked forward to this book with anticipation because of the dust jacket blurb. What I found instead was a dreary hash of centurys' old books that really did not interest me and unintelligblle descriptions of sacks of libraries on various continents that would only have been of interest to history buffs of that period. I wish King had spent more time on character development than the other stuff. I was getting to like Mr. Inchbold & Althea but had to skim too much of the boring stuff so I probably missed things about them. In defense of the story though, I must say that it inspired me to look up Hermes Trimegistus & the Rosecrucians on the Internet to read more about them. So in closing I am giving the book a 3 star rating because it did inspire me to do some research.
Rating:
Summary: an excellent historical thriller
Review: I initially fell in love with the cover art of Ross King's Ex Libris, but soon was totally engrossed in the content of its pages instead. The story involves a mid-1600's London bookseller name Isaac Inchbold who is by self description, a softening bookworm who craves the comfort and regularity of his carefully organized life. His departure from his humdrum existence is precipitated by a simple letter, soliciting his help in finding a lost manuscript - but the details of the letters are suspicious, and the tone of the letter is hushed and desperate. After meeting an aristocrat's widow, Inchbold is led on an ever-descending spiral of thievery and intrigue surrounding the lost manuscript, which disrupts and then threaten's Inchbold's very life. I don't want to give away any more: the plot twists keep you rabidly turning pages all the way until the epilogue. Ross King's use of language is suberb, and really requires attention from the reader; his method of description and narrative beg a comparison to Dickens in many ways, while there is enough contemporary "action" sequences to keep you reading late into the night. I highly recommend this book for avid readers and history enthusiasts - there is abundant detail that shows the care and craft that Ross King has put into putting his own unique stamp on this book.
Rating:
Summary: Great Story - Ridiculous Ending
Review: I love historical fiction, particularly when, as in Ross King's case, a mystery is involved. Ex-Libris was a satisfying, and rewarding read for at least 300 of it's 392 pages (Paperback Edition). I have read many books involving English history, still, I feel Ex-Libris painted a picture more vividly of life in the mid-1600's.
Without giving anything away, or not much anyway, Ex-Libris is a story set in the disastrous years of and after English Reformation. There are two stories entwined together in the story, they run parallel to eachother but are decades apart. Both stories center in the search for a missing text, one of greater value than the reader can imagine at first.
I enjoyed the introspective pace of the narrator Isaac Inchbold. His accounts of life on London Bridge were enlightening, and convincingly authentic, the sites and smells and cricks and creeks are all lushly delivered. Fans of historical fiction will lap these details up. I wonder, however, if Ross King prefers narration to dialogue, for I felt the story was lacking in the latter, and when it did occur, it sounded versed in the same tongue as narration, every character exactly as eloquent as the next. I probably wouldn't mention such an incongruity, or even write a review for this book at all if it hadn't been for the way the book ends. Ex-Libris is recommended in the same breath, with almost all reviewers, with the works of Umberto Eco, Arturo Perez-Reverte, and Iain Pears, which is good company no doubt. But I felt some of the comparisons are too obvious. Our hero (or, anti-hero, in Mr. Inchbold's defense he is clumsy and club-footed) spends a waning chapter on deciphering a cryptic jumble of letters he finds, and, while he does solve it's peculiar riddle, it hardly seems important. It seems, in the deja vu sense, a tribute to Umberto Eco's intricate novel Foucualt's Pendulum and little more.
The story also suffers slightly from esoteric name-dropping, not of seventeenth century personalities but of Hermetic texts from up to three hundred years previous to this story. If the reader is not familiar with the works of Cornelius Agrippa, Blaise de Vignenère, Böhmen or Fincino will that reader feel confused or muddled? No, I did not and do not know the few names I just plucked out of Ex-Libris, but I never felt I was missing intricate details of the story, I felt instead that I was trekking briskly uphill to reach a destination that I increasingly demanded better-be-worth-it with each trudging step. The book is peppered with bibliophiles, there doesn't seem to be anyone in post-Cromwell England (according to Ex-Libris) who is not extremely well read. It is the ending that upset me the most, it is the ending that prompts me to write this review. Now, how do I do this without giving anything crucial away... It seems the last chapter was reserved to tie so loosely the hundreds of shreds that kept us plugging along. It was the most improbable finale I can think of. And in the midst of life threatening turmoil, two characters intellectually pander all the conclusions as they run for their very lives. It's more ridiculous than even that, I promise you, but I don't want to give away the preposterous details. Here is the worst part, and this is safe territory, for it is mentioned on the very last page but does not give anything dreadful away. The narrator sits in his bookshop on London Bridge many years later in the Epilogue, and he mentions the passing years by saying "...even now, in the Year of Our Lord 1700..." and all the while he is staring out a window of his bookshop on London Bridge! (I know I repeated that twice, but I had to). Now, I was flabbergasted when I read that, insulted and disgusted. Most any amateur of English history, I am by no means an expert, knows that the Great Fire that devastated London (known also as "London's Fire") started in a bakery on London Bridge in 1666. September First, I just looked it up to make sure. The fire, fueled by an unusual early morning wind, tore apart London. It is disturbing that Ross King, who knows much more about
Seventeenth-Century London than I am likely to ever know, by-passed this alarming detail. The question remains, after all of my directionless rambling, do I recommend this book or not? I do. I think the details about the time, the rich scope described deliciously in four senses is worth reading. And the ending, while unforgivable, does not merit abolition of the story that precedes it.
Rating:
Summary: A terrific and literate story
Review: I picked up Ex-Libris because I loved the cover art - and was soon engrossed in its contents, rabidly turning page after page, all the way through the epilogue. Ex-Libris is the story of mild-mannered bookseller and self-described homebody, Isaac Inchbold, set in 1670 London. His quiet, predictable life is disrupted by a intriguing letter from a widow, who retains his services to locate a missing, and purportedly valuable, manuscript that is missing from her fathers' library. As Inchbold begins to research the provenance of the manuscript, he is drawn into a network of intrigue and international espionage that encompasses nearly all of Renaissance Europe, ancient Greece, Egypt and more. Rather than reveal any more of the plot, it's worth noting King's writing craft: his settings come alive with plenty of well-researched detail that only the most dyed-in-the-wool stickler would take issue with; his narrative and description beg a comparison to Dickens in many ways, with his unwilling protagonist being dragged along through events by an assortment of people who only seek to use him; and lastly, a plot that has as many twists, turns, and blind alleys as the street map of London itself. While King's use of language may require a little effort, Ex-Libris is worth every minute. This is not only a well-researched historical thriller, it's a really compelling story with a great twist ending. If you like Eco's Name of the Rose, or even Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, you'll like what's between the covers of Ross King's Ex Libris.
Rating:
Summary: Ex-Libris
Review: I stumbled upon this book and decided to try it out for a diversion. I found it stylistically to be rather roundabout and convoluted although i eventually came to enjoy his sentence structure. I did not enjoy the parallel stories although structurally they came together nicely at the end. I'm not one to balk at esoterica or historical overload, but i sometimes found the large amout of facts to be a bit much--although the majority of them were both interesting and relevant, i think some of it could have been condensed. Plotting was somewhat predicatable and the secret to the mystery was sadly disappointing. The shades of Eco's works throughout made the entire story a bit anticlimactic. I found it to be a quick enjoyable read, but not the something i would add to my personal library.
Rating: 
Summary: Wish I'd paid more attention to the reviews
Review: I was actually enjoying this book until I reached the end. Then I was mad that I'd spent time reading it. The ending just does not fit the build up, and is a major let down. There appeared to be excellent research into the the historical time period. The swiftly changing political structure was presented in a manner that fit the story and provided the reader a framework to understand how certain books were seen as dangerous, politically threatening or valuable assets. However, the mysterious quest that the "hero" goes on ends up being laughable. It seemed to be used more for the author to demonstrate his understanding of the political structure of the times. I would recommned "The Name of the Rose" instead of this book. It is a far superior read.
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