Reviews with content warning for Violence - Ink and Bone

I remember reading this book years ago when I was a kid and I loved it. Back then only the first book in the series was out. Now that more are out, I can’t wait to read the whole series!

I absolutely loved the large and diverse cast of characters! They came from all over the globe and has such beautiful and developed distinct personalities and idiosyncrasies.

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thewarbler's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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rhall19's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

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rinku's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious 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? It's complicated

4.0

At the beginning, I wasn’t sure if I would like Ink and Bone but later, it fascinated me totally. This book is what I wished The Atlas Six or Babel were: It had characters from different part of the world working together in a magic library, completed with some great action scenes and deep characters.

This book follows Jess, who’s living in London where real books are only supposed to be in libraries, but his father is smuggling them. When he’s older, he’s invited to become a postulant at the great library of Alexandria where all the knowledge is stored and controlled. Arriving there, he learns that there’s more to the library than he thought and he’s in the middle of this big intrigue.

The beginning was kinda slow but as soon as Jess arrives at the library, the story got more interesting. There are postulants from around the world there which I always love. At first, there’s a lot of competition between them for the few places in the library. Later, after they endure some hardships, they get closer to each other and

Wolfe starts to see them as equals which was so great

. These hardships include

the occupation of Oxford that depicted war quite realistically and hence disturbing

. After this, the novel in general became more exciting with dramatic action scenes and amazing moments between specific characters. Besides those, I furthermore enjoyed some small slice of life moments that introduced the characters more to us. The ending is not too satisfying since it’s kinda open ended and

Jess has to become a solider now, urgh

What is additionally great about this book is the quite dark atmosphere and the steampunk elements thrown in here and there. In general, the world is really interesting with its different fractions. The chapters are a bit long though and at some points, I wished that we got a few more descriptions.

The characters are one of the things I enjoyed the most about Ink and Bone. Jess is a great protagonist who’s caught up between two worlds, namely his love for books and the library, and the family business around smuggling books. This creates a tense atmosphere, especially when Jess first arrives at the library. Another character I absolutely love is Wolfe, he’s so interesting. I also shipped him with Santi, who’s great as well,

and I was right about them

! The rest of the cast was likable as well and it was so great to see how they slowly warm up in the course of the story. Thomas especially found a place in my heart because he’s just so wholesome;

his death was so sad and shocking

I only had my problems with Morgan. It’s so obvious from the beginning that she’s the love interest but I really can’t see what Jess finds in her. Her character is not worked out enough and their chemistry is not really believable. Jess trusts her way too fast, and it was annoying how much he was focussed on her in the later part of the book; it isn’t shown enough why

he would sacrifice his life for hers

Ink and Bone is thus an entertaining and dark fantasy novel that I personal wouldn’t categorize as YA since the conflicts in it felt too “adult” for this. There were so many interesting characters, and I can’t wait to see what adventures await them next – but I’ll also worry how long they will survive lmao.

Content Warnings

_alyssar_'s review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

_mirambo_'s review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

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hayzey's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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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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