The 7th novel in The Invisible Library series by Genevieve Cogman, and the sequel to The Secret Chapter.
A professional spy for a mysterious Library which harvests fiction from different realities, Irene faces a series of assassination attempts that threaten to destroy her and everything she has worked for.Irene is teaching her new assistant the fundamentals of a Librarian's job, and finding that training a young Fae is more difficult than she expected. But when they both narrowly avoid getting killed in an assassination attempt, she decides that learning by doing is the only option they have left - especially when the assassins keep coming for them, and for Irene's other friends as well...
In order to protect themselves, Irene and her friends must do what they do best: search for information to defeat the overwhelming threat they face and identify their unseen enemy. To do that, Irene will have to delve deeper into her own history than she ever has before, face an ancient foe, and uncover secrets that will change her life and the course of the Library forever.
The Dark Archive is followed by The Untold Story.
The Dark Archive provides examples of the following tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Response: Of a sorts - when the team returns to the Library after confronting Alberich, Irene turns to confront Vale for his Armor-Piercing Question suggesting to Alberich that he might be Irene's father. Before she can actually ask him anything though, she sees a look in his eyes that confirms he meant everything he said.
- Back from the Dead: Lord Guantes returns after his death at Irene’s hand in Book 2.
- Body Backup Drive: Lady Guantes brings back her husband (or rather, a version of him) by uploading an AI approximation of his mind to another Fae’s body and exploiting the Theory of Narrative Causality present in high-chaos worlds to forcibly convert the host’s body to a replica of Lord Guantes’s original body.
- Curse Escape Clause: When Irene is trapped in one of Alberich’s Language-based trap circles, she ends up against a clause written into the circle that specifies the circle can only be undone by Alberich’s own blood. She works around the restriction using her own blood, relying on the symbolism of Librarians being metaphorical brothers and sisters to satisfy the clause. Ultimately averted - Alberich anticipated that exploit and wrote his circle to protect against it. Irene’s blood works, but only because she turns out to be Alberich’s long-lost daughter and therefore more literally of his blood.
- Dying as Yourself: After Irene uses the Language to deconvert the last Lord Guantes copy, the original person gives her a brief nod of acknowledgement before he crumbles to dust.
- "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Of a sort. Rather than calling out to the host, Vale instead attempts to rattle Alberich for long enough to give Irene a fighting chance.
- I Know Your True Name: A rare positive example - Irene uses Catherine’s true name to bring her into the Library, making her the first ever Fey to gain entrance.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: To the surprise of both Irene and Alberich, Vale declares that the former is the latter’s daughter in an attempt to stop Alberich from overwriting his daughter with his own personality.
- Mind-Reformat Death: Irene tricks Lady Guantes into shutting down the systems hosting Alberich's remote presence and the AI approximation of Lord Guantes, shutting down both Alberich's ability to reach other worlds and Lady Guantes' project of bringing her husband back to life using body backup drives.
- Not Quite Dead: Turns out the fire that burned down Alberich’s library wasn’t quite as lethal as Irene had hoped.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The cerebral controllers, mechanical devices designed to hijack a victim’s nervous system.
- Wham Line: ‘Alberich!’ Vale’s fingers tightened on [Irene's] shoulders, and he looked squarely into her eyes. ‘You’re there. I know it. Release her, man, or you’ll have killed your own daughter!’
