In 2016 I found a book at my local book store called Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine. I bought it the way I buy wine – the cover looked good and the blurb on the back sounded like something I would enjoy.

I remember it took me a while to get started on it but once I did I devoured it in just a few days. It was so good and not at all what I was expecting. The universe quickly opened up and the scope changed. I thought it was a one-off but it turned out to be the first book in a 5-book series that ended in September this year.

Sword and Pen is the last one in the series and the fate of the world rests on the group of young people at the centre of the story. Jess, the smuggler’s boy from England, Kahlila, the brilliant Scholar from somewhere in the Middle-East. Dario, the Royal cousin from Spain, Glain, the fierce soldier from Wales, Thomas, the engineer from Germany and finally Morgan, the gifted Obscurist from England. All of them led by their mentor from the first book, Scholar Wolfe and his lover Captain Santi.

The initial premise that drew me in was the idea that the Great Library in Alexandria had never burned and the Library held the keys to all the knowledge in the world. Now I don’t know about you but I can still be hit with the realisation that the Library of Alexandria DID burn down and all that knowledge was lost and it makes me furious. So the idea that it somehow survived is absolutely what drew me in.

In the first book the stakes are raised almost immediately because while Jess arrives in Alexandria to infiltrate the Great Library he quickly realises that not all is well in the organisation and he is quickly forced to chose between his father’s wishes and his own conscience.

The series is set in a sort of present day AU where the Library controls all knowledge. England and Wales are at war, the US has closed its borders, France is under Library rule etc. Tech is mixed up with Obscurist magic.
Books are borrowed from the Library on Blanks where you can read stuff but you cannot own books.

I will put the series on my re-read pile because it’s been so long I have forgotten lots of key events. I have even bought the whole series in hardcover because they are definite Keepers.