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Library of Souls - Ransom Riggs Jacob and Emma both had a great deal of character growth in this book. The story was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I've rated it five stars and added it to my favorites shelf. That said, there were a few things that could have been improved.

The photography. In the first book, and even the second, it appeared that Ransom Riggs had simply found photographs and chosen to link them together with a story. In the second book I still felt like the photographs matched very well with the story. In this book some of the photographs did match, but not all of them. It felt more like the author had gone searching for certain photos, and then almost forced them to work in the (wonderful) world that he was creating. The photo of Mother Dust, in particular jarred me a bit from the story as she was described as having only one arm, but if you look closely you can see that her other arm is reaching up to clutch her head-covering. The writing improved at least from Hollow City (to close to the level of the first book,) but the photographs didn't do much to aid the story, unlike the first two books, and I would've liked to see the strengthening of the writing, along with the brilliant use of the photographs like what we saw in book one.

The ending. The ending wrap-up was way too fast. In many ways I was satisfied with it, but in some ways I feel like the story is not yet finished. The first problem is something that I saw someone else point out in their review: Fiona. Fiona was one of my favorite characters and I thought it was sloppy of Ransom Riggs to leave her fate unknown. Maybe in Emma's letters she talked about returning to the loop where Fiona was lost and finding her (preferably alive.) It just felt clumsy that the last mention of her was Hugh being sure she was alive, and Enoch saying that she was probably dead. The other ending problem was Jacob's peculiarity. One of the things I'd been curious about since the first book is if there had been peculiarities with Jacob and Abe's talent forever, but no one had known it because there were no hollows. The revelation about the Library of Souls was wonderful, but ultimately unsatisfactory. Why? Because the loop collapsed. There is no more library. The fact that this happened at the same time as the Hollows were brought to (near) extinction makes me truly feel bad for Jacob. Even though he has grown to the point that he no longer feels like he needs a flashy talent, we were left feeling like everything that showed his talent had been eliminated. I would have been pleased if the library had been moved to another loop in Florida that Jacob had to guard. Or I would have been satisfied if we had seen Jacob's talent beginning to manifest in another way. I would have also rather enjoyed it if there'd been another librarian at the Library of Souls, who could have taught Jacob more about his gift.

The loops. The weird thing is that in the first book we continually heard about the resetting of the loop. It was a vital thing that needed to happen if the loops were going to keep functioning. It struck me as odd that for the length of time Jacob and Emma were in Devil's Acre there was never once a mention of the loop reset.

Another problem was the battle with Caul and Bentham I had been given to believe that the Peculiars had small and more subtle gifts, (for all that being invisible or having bees living in your stomach isn't very subtle, both things can be either hidden, or shown in a circus with the Normals simply believing these things were a trick) so having some stolen souls turn people into all-powerful, angry giants with telekinesis, or giant insect-like gods. I could see it more so if it were multiple stolen souls, mixing together with bizarre results, but to have those things occur from just one soul apiece was stretching the way that I had seen this world beyond what I'm willing to suspend my animation for. The other thing I did wonder about is if Caul could potentially have left what was left of the loop the same way the peculiar children did at the end of the first book, and wreak havoc on the ancient world.

I know I've mostly just complained about the book, but it is a lot easier to point out flaws then excellence, especially when there are more good things in a book than bad ones. As previously established this book is on my favorites shelf, and I wish the Miss Peregrine movie was coming out sooner than an entire year. And I hope they don't ruin it the way that so many other books get ruined as movies.