Elise (On The Bookshelves)'s Reviews > Ink and Bone

Original Post Can Be Found at On The Bookshelves

“There are three parts to learning: information, knowledge and wisdom, A mere accumulation of information is not knowledge, and a treasure of knowledge is not in itself, wisdom.”

It is 2025 and the Great Library of Alexandria still exists with its presence looming over every city. The Library controls the flow of knowledge as the ownership of books is forbidden.

Ink and Bone is an interesting concept, but the story isn't exactly fluid. There's a lot of world building from the overall setting, the Great Library and its hierarchy, and to the use of Alchemy.

The main protagonist is sixteen year old Jess Brightwell. He believes in the Library, but still helps his family run an illegal black market business by retrieving and delivering books to wealthy and knowledge hungry clients.

When an opportunity arises, his family pushes him to complete an entry test to gain an apprenticeship at the library. But his family have ulterior motives as they want him to spy and gather information to avoid raids and discover rare books. However, as Jess becomes more involved with his training and the other teenagers, his loyalties become tested.

The setting is strange, obviously since it's an alternate universe. It's 2025 but it seems as though the world never really developed and felt very reminiscent of an earlier century. Then Alchemy comes into play also with devices that receive updates with information which is controlled by the Library. These essentially sound like primitive versions of iPads.

The story centralizes around a group of teenage apprentices learning to become Librarians as well as the Library being threatened yet again by an individual who begins to think outside the box. This idea would revolutionize the world, and that is through the creation of..... a printing press which can duplicate and create physical copies of books. *GASP*

That's right. Since the Library still exists and controls the flow of knowledge by using Alchemy to allow individuals to read a selected range of titles, they are threatened by these ideas because it would render the Library obsolete. This plot caused a few shakes of the head and some scoffing.

The characters were decent, but not exactly memorable. The main group of characters were very diverse in ethnicity and personality. Jess was your typical protagonist but lacked creating any real connection, and props to Caine for pushing back a romantic interest until the second half of the book. None of the other characters really stood out except for the small allusion to Wolfe and Santi being in a relationship, which was unexpected but nice in the end.

At the beginning of the book it seemed similar to Harry Potter with some of the scenes and the initial dynamic of the characters (e.g. Jess being the protagonist, Khalila being the brightest student and Thomas as the awkward one). This slightly changed later on when the story began to pick up but it definitely reflected Harry Potter/Percy Jackson.

Overall, the book wasn't bad but it just didn't hit the mark personally. Typically for the first installment of a series, you hope to connect with the characters, understand the structure of the world and become really immersed in the story. This didn't really happen so most likely I won't be reading further.

The next installment in The Great Library series, Paper and Fire, is already out in bookstores and Ash and Quill will be out sometime next year.