Reviews tagging 'Child death'

Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine

3 reviews

orshi999's review

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adventurous emotional informative tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

Imagine a world in which anyone, anywhere, could create and distribute their own words, however ignorant or flawed!

Ink and Bone takes place in a world controlled by the Great Library. With the power of alchemy anything is possible including the distribution of knowledge through blanks, the only thing is that the ownership of books is forbidden. Our main character is a boy named Jess Brightwell who was raised in a family of book smugglers who smuggle illegal books to those who can afford them.

Diversity:
Jess himself is British and his best friend is German, other members of the cast range from being Muslim and Japanese. Out of the two of them, only one makes it to the end of the book.


LGBTQ+:
We don't get explicated LGBTQ representation until around halfway through the book and it came from a very surprising source! Two of the adult characters who look over our main cast are together and have been since before the book started. Their character's never started with them being gay it was only something 'new' about them that the children were accepting of


Writing: I wasn't very fond of Caine's writing style. In my opinion, there was way too much telling and not enough showing and that made it hard for me to like a lot of the characters. I couldn't understand how some of them became friends or why they cared so much about each other in the end. While I also hate large chunks of world-building if you still have to add more things to a setting that was a main part of the book at the end of it maybe you should reconsider the pacing.
Jess comes from a family of smugglers but many of those skills only became important when they were needed and if they weren't you could almost forget about them. Even the romance came out of nowhere and was very unbelievable with how quickly Morgan and Jess trusted each other with their secrets.


Stakes:
It's really hard to take the book seriously when the stakes are not very consistent. I think that they hyped up the whole thing as being brutal but when they were given the opportunities they blew it. There were so many points near the start where people could be hurt or choose to drop out themselves but these were blown over and replaced with our MC miraculously saving both himself and everyone around him.
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bookcaptivated's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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caitlinjadams's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

A solid and brutal book that becomes more and more complicated as it goes and promises to reveal more and more as the series continues. I’m intrigued enough by the world building and how it probes at the many ways books and knowledge are power that I will likely read more of the series, but I also might not. There’s too much death and murder and torture and fear to be an truly enjoyable read for me. 
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