Jess grew up in a poor home with a brute of a brother and his father, who taught him the business of book smuggling. Jess is forced to steal books so his father can resell them illegally in the black market.
Books are the most precious thing in this novel. They are upheld as the highest of items and some characters even value them over human lives. This makes a lot of people angry and causes them to burn books and libraries. These people are known as Burners. As a great lover of books, this very idea horrified me.
Ink and Bone had such a strong, awesome cast of characters and, once again, Rachel Caine’s writing was delightful to read. She is a traditionally good writer and has excellent sense in plotting. I really loved her old-fashioned, Shakespearean style in Prince of Shadows and I’m happy to report that this book lived up to my high expectations based on her previous novel.
“He remembered holding this book, feeling the history of the leather cover someone had tanned and stretched and cut to fit. The paper that someone had laboriously filled by hand and sewn into the binding. Years, heavy on the pages.”
I’m really not sure what genre to categorize this book as. It’s a mix of historical fiction, fantasy, and dystopian. Historical fiction because the main topic is the Great Library of Alexandria, fantasy because there are certain characters who can preform magical feats of alchemy, and dystopian because the supreme rulers of the world are evil and people are trying to overthrow them. It might be a mash up of several different genres or a brand-new one altogether, but whatever the case, I highly enjoyed it.
My favorite part of the book was when the students first arrived at the library and started training with Wolfe. Oh, Wolfe. He was the headmaster of the students and I seriously loved him. Most everyone in this book hated him and there were so many reasons to despise him, but I couldn’t help admiring his intelligence and quick-witted thinking.
Ink and Bone was filled to the brim with adventure and all kinds of alchemical goodness. It also made me appreciate books a little more—not books themselves, exactly, but the freedom we have to read whatever and however we want in our world that I’ve never stopped to think about before.
No comments:
Post a Comment