Julia Stibane-Hol asked Genevieve Cogman:

First of all: I loved your books! Can't wait for the fourth one! I was wondering what your inspiration for The Library and the Librarians was? I'm very interested in how you came up with The Language, and the travels between the worlds. I'm studying English literature, and I'd love to write a term paper about The Invisible Library some time soon!

Genevieve Cogman Thank you very much!

I have a lot of inspirations for the Library and the Librarians, and the Language. The idea of hidden libraries and interdimensional travel through them is in Terry Pratchett (Unseen University, L-space and so on), but there are also examples such as Dream's Library in Gaiman's _Sandman_ series, or the Library of Yves in the French _In Nomine Satanis/Magna Veritas_ roleplaying game. And there are probably a lot of other ones which I can't bring to mind right now. (Apologies for that.)

Multiple worlds... I think one of my earliest original inspirations for that would have been Michael Moorcock, with Elric (and all his other heroes), and Law and Chaos. But again, there are a lot of other sources, and I'm afraid that I'm a very wide reader, so I can't be certain which inspired me "first".

For the Language, I think my first idea for that was definitely based on Ursula Le Guin and her _Wizard of Earthsea_ series - though again, the idea of "knowing the true names of things and being able to affect them" occurs in a wide range of other sources, from Barbara Hambly's wizards to Diane Duane's wizards. Not to forget legend and folklore before that - how often has "knowing the true name of an enemy" been the key to defeating them in a story?

So, well... lots of inspirations. (Not forgetting Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Who.) I hope this helps. I think that it is reasonable to get inspiration from other sources, as long as you do something _new_ with it, and I hope that I've done that.

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