Reviews with content warning for Death - Ink and Bone

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