The Legend of Zelda regularly follows traditional fantasy tropes with its castles, cathedrals, and enchanted woods. One trope that it often skipped is the great library. There are only two examples I can think of throughout all the games of libraries: the Hyrule Castle Library from Breath of the Wild that appears in Tears of the Kingdom and Age of Calamity, and the House of Books from A Link to the Past.
The House of Books sits to the south of Kakariko Village, hunched up against a bank of trees. It’s unassuming, hardly any different to the other buildings dotted around the map, though it is narrower in terms of depth. Its red brick roof is bright and homey, and its wooden walls give it that Kakariko charm that we know so well.
Inside, it’s an interesting little space. There are nine bookcases, three of which sit back to back, and they’re full of books of different colors and sizes. There are little log section stools, perhaps for reading or for reaching the higher shelves. There’s a large, sturdy table in the corner, again presumably for reading or studying and making notes.
The bookshelves, walls, and furniture are all neutral shades. The overall aesthetic is what one might call ‘cottagecore’, and it certainly looks warm and cozy, rather than sad, dreary beige. The color palette contrasts nicely with the only colorful objects in the room: the large green entry rug, and the Book of Mudora on the highest shelf.
This quaint little library is the perfect place to look for a tome on forgotten, ancient languages. Every good library should have an old and mysterious book that might come in handy one day.
It’s interesting that of the limited number of buildings in A Link to the Past, a library should be included and then almost never again. There are bookshelves and studies in many other Zelda games, but very few libraries. Mostly, they’ve been replaced with laboratories, leaning into a steampunk aesthetic at times rather than going full Tolkien fantasy.
I’d love to know why! I can guarantee that the game designers don’t think about book displays as often as I do in my day job running a bookshop, but surely a good archive has so much potential as a setting? It’s such a strange omission to me the more I think about it. And yet the House of Books is right there in such an early game.
Maybe one day I’ll ask them, but until then I’ve got my cozy House of Books to visit on replays.
