Hey. Been a while.
I have been so busy writing (or, at times, avoiding writing) that I have ignored this blog. Shame on me.
I have several topics in mind, but for now: here's my Goodreads book review for "Ink and Bone".
Happy reading!
That I didn't give this book 5 stars is no slight on the novel. For me, those are (and ought to be) rare. "Ink and Bone" gets a solid 4.25 stars, and is very, very good.
One of the things I liked most about it is the thing that may be causing the (very few) detractors to have a hard time: this book cares very little about plot.
It's true. There's barely any actual plot in this book. And it's all the better for it.
One of the books "Ink and Bone" is being compared to all over the map is "Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone", which is ridiculous on the face of it. Neither the tone nor the content is at all similar, and apart from the rather vague alchemical machinations behind the scenes, the characters in this book neither see nor perform 'magic'.
And yet, like "The Philosopher's Stone", this book uses the 'year at school' setting as a tool to drag the reader along. In the Harry Potter book, besides a vague sense that Voldemort is up to something and his scheme will need to be defeated, the only real plot structure is: Harry goes to school. The incidents that occur, the real 'plot', is just Harry going to classes. And then there's a big end-piece.
Sort-of similarly, "Ink and Bone" uses the fact that the characters are attending a class to earn a spot working for The Library as a way for the reader to infer a kind of forward momentum. The 'plot' only drives forward insofar as time moves ahead to a certain destination. There is no villain as such (debatable, but give me this one for now) nor is there a goal to achieve or set obstacles to overcome. There is no overarching narrative in the sense that the reader can understand an endpoint that needs to be achieved, and what the hero is required to do to attain it, what hurdles he must jump to win the day.
There is a timeline set out before Jess (the protagonist) and us. And the book moves ever closer to that point. This is the only sense of momentum author Rachel Caine feels the need to give us.
And quite right she is, too.
This sort of 'false momentum' is all the rope the story needs to drag itself along, to give it a sense of driving forward narratively. Then all the real work can be done with the characters, which is what 'story' essentially is.
Jess, you see, is something of a smuggler. In an alternate history where the Library of Alexandria runs the world, and has supreme authority over all collective knowledge, the black market has a keen interest in original books. And Jess' father is one of those black marketeers.
So when Jess winds up having to apply for a position working for the very Library he has been taught to oppose, an intriguing moral conflict is posed.
Setting him and his ideals against a cast of diverse characters with their own agendas and viewpoints adds even more fuel to the (Greek) fire, and this is where the actual story takes place. The story is Jess and his instructor and his fellow students learning to deal with one another, to respect one another, and the various interesting ways they interact and grow as a result.
Events certainly take place - big, important ones. Life-threatening and enthralling ones. But nothing that I'd call a 'plot', because they stand alone as incidents that do not essentially contribute to any overarching narrative. They are simply things that happen - but what those 'things that happen' do is affect the characters in fascinating ways that reveal (and change) who they are at their cores.
Are there flaws in the book? Of course there are. (Show me a book without them.) For my money, the opening segments setting up Jess' world are too far removed from the setting of the rest of the book, and would be better excised. They set up an expectation for a certain type of story that we learn some time later is not to be the case.
I would also postulate that the reason some readers give up early on, feeling that the book is 'slow' or 'dry', is simply down to extremely long chapters! Later on, the book is divided into easier-to-swallow segments, but the interminable length of those early portions leads one to feel that the book is dragging on and leading nowhere - when simple chapter divides would kick up the pace by themselves.
As, of course, would not wasting quite so much time setting up Jess' life in London which will not bear much relation to the rest of the novel at all. But I've talked about that already...
Jess is a well-defined character, with certain notions inbuilt thanks to his upbringing which are challenged by his own experiences as a student. While he's neither the wise-cracking, fun-loving rogue you instantly fall in love with, nor the wide-eyed ingenue the reader can put themselves in the shoes of, Jess is likeable and interesting in his own right.
The other students are less dimensional, but diverse and entertaining enough. There's not quite time in a book of this length to get fully into the heads of so many players, but the author very quickly lets us know who these people from around the world are, what their biases are, and how they will relate to one another.
She then spends the book picking that apart and letting the characters grow and develop based on their interactions.
More interesting (at least to me) was the instructor: Christopher Wolfe. A hard-nosed, by-the-book teacher at first glance, as we read more and more, as Jess' experiences teach us more, we see something else entirely. We understand the man, where he comes from, what has made him this way, and that the surface is a poor source to make one's judgments based upon.
I look forward to the later books in the series. Seeing more of Jess, more of Morgan. But mostly, I want to see what becomes of Wolfe - because he is the aspect of this book I became most intrigued by.
The alternate reality this is based upon uses some hocus-pocus that I feel could have best been replaced by something less obviously mystical, but I admit this is a matter of taste. Some major developments rest upon it, but I think something more ambiguous and more technologically-justifiable would suit the 'alternative history' angle better, as what is here removes itself just a little too far from our world.
The sentry machines I can buy into. The 'magic'? Less so, in this context - though I'm a big fantasy fan in general.
More to my taste was the political flavor to the whole endeavor. The Library, the cutters, the Burners. You may begin the novel feeling one way about these people/organizations, and yet feel quite different by the end. Indeed, I should be much surprised if you did not.
Will you know exactly how to feel about every group by the conclusion of this book? I should hope not; it is nothing so black-and-white as that. And this is the ingredient that (I feel) really makes the book soar.
Who is in the right? Who is in the wrong? As in real life, it is not cut and dried, and everyone seems to have a little of both mixed in.
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
