I’ve been having a rough time of things, so reading hasn’t been happening as much as I’d like. But I did get one of my holds in and got it finished before I had to turn it back in, so let’s see what I decided I wanted to check out several months ago.
The book follows Jess, a kid who comes from a book smuggling family who has the opportunity to get into the Library of Alexandria where he can better help his family smuggle books. While there, he uncovers more about what it takes to be a part of the library, and some of the darker aspects of how the library works to keep their secrets and prevent the public from access to the information within.
The world is one that took me a bit to understand. At first I thought it was meant to be a straight alternate history where the Library of Alexandria did not burn but had instead been privatized, but there’s a lot of subtle and not so subtle magical elements in it that threw me off. It’s revealed slowly and very matter of factually, where Jess is not entirely new to the world so a lot of information is presented much more as fact than something that is explained. Which, honestly, I really like and once I got it I was in.
The story gets a lot darker than I expected from this story about a bunch of kids in a school to pursue their ambitions to this much more political game that is being played with them as pawns. While Jess is bright and able to eventually recognize what’s happening, it’s clear that he’s not in a place to actually do anything about it. At least, not in this book.
Overall, I really enjoyed it. The pacing was quick and, once I got a better understanding of the world, I was in and I really enjoyed watching the story unfold. There’s a lot of interesting characters besides Jess and they all feel very well rounded, each with their own mysteries that I was excited to uncover. Definitely worth the read!