Reviews with content warning for Violence - Ink and Bone

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine

9 reviews

rinku's review against another edition

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

Go to review page

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

Go to review page

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

Content Warnings

hayzey's review

Go to review page

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

Content Warnings

orshi999's review against another edition

Go to review page

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.

Content Warnings

bookcaptivated's review against another edition

Go to review page

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

Content Warnings

caitlinjadams's review

Go to review page

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.

Content Warnings

gracefulbooks's review

Go to review page

adventurous dark emotional funny informative mysterious tense medium-paced

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

5.0

I'm shocked I never wrote a review of this book.

I'm writing this review after doing my first re-read of this book and can I just say I think I can NEVER rate this book lower than a 5 out of 5 stars. But let me just introduce you to this series.

We are in an alternate universe where the Great Library of Alexandria was never destroyed and now is the central power for controlling knowledge and the books that have been historically created throughout our history and some after too. As it now takes place in 2025. With knowledge being a powerful thing, and nobody having access to any and all books, we are introduced to Jesse Brightwell. A young English man who along with his family illegally smuggles physical copies of books to clients. If you are caught doing this you can be hanged publically as it is basically seen as treason.

Despite Jesse's illegal business, he loves the work simply because he at least gets to read physical books whereas most law-abiding citizens have to use blanks that are monitored and controlled by the Great Library. And even though he is part of a family business he has never truly fit into his family of criminals, so when his father tells him that he wants him to join the library and be an inside man Jesse thinks he's absolutely mad.

But Jesse ends up taking the tests and making it in. He joins a group of other potential scholars (those who work in the library) and learns under the strict hand of Scholar Wolfe. Along the way Jesse and his friends who all had a bit more faith in the library start to see the dark underbelly of it all.

This serious has officially become my comfort series and I cannot scream its praises from the rooftops enough, it breaks my heart to know that the author, Rachel Caine is no longer with us because she truly was a gifted woman and I'm so grateful to her for creating this world and these characters. She changed my life with this series and I hope she knows that wherever she is, may she rest in peace.

But I want to say that this book is such a fantastic introduction to this series as a whole. The first time I read it I didn't pick up on certain things, so reading it a second time around I was stunned by some of the masterful foreshadowing and more. I felt so impacted by little scenes simply because I'm so attached to these characters and they feel like family to me.

So seeing their journeys all begin for a second time and knowing what lies ahead- got so emotional during so many scenes where it seemed silly for me to get all teary-eyed. I just can't recommend this series enough to anyone and everyone.

It has seriously changed my life and set the standard for any book I read.

Content Warnings

luckykosmos's review

Go to review page

adventurous medium-paced

Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

I hadn't heard anything about this book in the wild, and was surprised, because I had a blast reading this! My qualms were pretty minor - a romance that could have done with a little more development, since we see why they care about each other, but not why they care for each other - but I'm thrilled to keep going with this one.

Content Warnings

More...