Ink Blood Sister Scribe by Emma Törz Published by William Morrow (5.30.2023)
Genres: Adult, Fantasy
Format: Hardcover, 416 pages
Source: I own it
For generations, the Kalotay family has guarded a collection of ancient and rare books. Books that let a person walk through walls or manipulate the elements--books of magic that half-sisters Joanna and Esther have been raised to revere and protect.
All magic comes with a price, though, and for years the sisters have been separated. Esther has fled to a remote base in Antarctica to escape the fate that killed her own mother, and Joanna's isolated herself in their family home in Vermont, devoting her life to the study of these cherished volumes. But after their father dies suddenly while reading a book Joanna has never seen before, the sisters must reunite to preserve their family legacy. In the process, they'll uncover a world of magic far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined, and all the secrets their parents kept hidden; secrets that span centuries, continents, and even other libraries . . .
My thoughts
Holy. SHIT. Dude.
This book. This is the kind of story I dream of finding every time I open a new book (and rarely find). This book GRABBED me from the very first page and never let go! I was hopelessly hooked, and I knew in the first handful of pages that this was going to be a 5 star read for me as well as a new favorite. And I was sooo not wrong!
I fucking LOVED every single thing about this book! I just want to say that this is the coolest premise I’ve read in a very long time. First of all, I adore any book that is about books, especially when said books are magical. And everything about the books – the way they were written with blood, the fact that reading a book grants the magical property it was written for (i.e. tune a piano, bring rainclouds in a draught, make you fly, etc.), VAMPIRE BOOKS…ugh, literally every damn thing about the world was brilliant! I couldn’t get enough of it!
It’s been a long time since I read a book that I wanted to take my time with and just soak the words up slowly, simply because I wanted to savor it. Törz’s prose is absolutely stunning – within the first couple of chapters I was itching to highlight and annotate, so I actually went out and bought a copy to do so (I started reading on my Waterstones edition, and I refuse to write in special editions lol). There were so many beautiful passages, and her imagery is just… *chef’s kiss* beyond description. She has a way of describing things that puts you there viscerally. It was like I was physically there; seeing, hearing, feeling what was happening. Incredible imagery! The world was so vivid in my mind, and it made me want to crawl into the pages and live there!
As soon as I finished this book I wanted to read it all over again. If you haven’t read this book yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?!
Overall Assessment
Plot: 5/5
Premise: 5/5
Writing style: 5/5
Originality: 5/5
Characters: 4.5/5
World-building: 5/5
Pace: 5/5
Feels: 4/5
Cover: 4.5/5
Overall rating: 5/5
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