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A review by blove0312
Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine
adventurous
emotional
mysterious
tense
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
5.0
Reread ending 8/5/24:
This series is phenomenal. I cannot understand how the rating is under 4. The first time I read these, end of 2021 I think, I was blown away. I’ve got them on Audible and paperbacks, and they’re in my yearly rotation no matter what.
The Great Library of Alexandria never burned and in fact it and the librarians run the world. England is losing an apparently many hundreds of years war against Wales, where we begin our journey with Jess, the son of an infamous book smuggler. Why are we smuggling books? Because owning physical copies of books is illegal. The library has codices and “blanks” (essentially tablets) where you can download any copy of any book ever written (or so they’ll have you think). But there are still many people out there like me, and probably many of you, who think owning a physical book cannot be beaten. And so, the need for smugglers came about.
Jess’s father buys Jess an opening to go to the Great Library in Alexandria to test and train to become an apprentice and earn a chance to become part of it. With the strings attached of course that he is to make illegal runs for his father and learn (spy) all he can to pass it back out. There are only 6 openings to be filled, and I believe we start off with about 24 young adults. Jess and a few others become close as the group is whittled down, and then they’re sent into the heart of the war, Wales pressing in on Oxford, to save books at the library before it falls. And what he’ll learn will turn everything he thought he knew upside down; the Great Library isn’t so great after all, and they are willing to go to any length to keep some knowledge hidden away, killing people, imprisoning them, destroying their inventions.
Scholar Christopher Wolfe is one of my favorite fictional characters, ever. I apparently have a huge soft spot for fictional gay men (see Lord John Grey from Outlander, Robbie Fontaine from Green Creek, Magnus Bane from TMI/TID/etc. Jack Hawthorn from The Last Binding…).
This series is phenomenal. I cannot understand how the rating is under 4. The first time I read these, end of 2021 I think, I was blown away. I’ve got them on Audible and paperbacks, and they’re in my yearly rotation no matter what.
The Great Library of Alexandria never burned and in fact it and the librarians run the world. England is losing an apparently many hundreds of years war against Wales, where we begin our journey with Jess, the son of an infamous book smuggler. Why are we smuggling books? Because owning physical copies of books is illegal. The library has codices and “blanks” (essentially tablets) where you can download any copy of any book ever written (or so they’ll have you think). But there are still many people out there like me, and probably many of you, who think owning a physical book cannot be beaten. And so, the need for smugglers came about.
Jess’s father buys Jess an opening to go to the Great Library in Alexandria to test and train to become an apprentice and earn a chance to become part of it. With the strings attached of course that he is to make illegal runs for his father and learn (spy) all he can to pass it back out. There are only 6 openings to be filled, and I believe we start off with about 24 young adults. Jess and a few others become close as the group is whittled down, and then they’re sent into the heart of the war, Wales pressing in on Oxford, to save books at the library before it falls. And what he’ll learn will turn everything he thought he knew upside down; the Great Library isn’t so great after all, and they are willing to go to any length to keep some knowledge hidden away, killing people, imprisoning them, destroying their inventions.
Scholar Christopher Wolfe is one of my favorite fictional characters, ever. I apparently have a huge soft spot for fictional gay men (see Lord John Grey from Outlander, Robbie Fontaine from Green Creek, Magnus Bane from TMI/TID/etc. Jack Hawthorn from The Last Binding…).