The Procrastinators Book Club discussion

Welcome to the Ink and Bone Buddy Read Discussion thread! This thread officially opens on May 5th and anyone can join at any time. Please keep in mind that spoilers are allowed in this thread but only up to the group's current reading place. Do not spoil the book if you've read further than the group. Any extra days can be used to catch up!

Each day we will be reading by chapters or page numbers. Page numbers are an approximation based on the hardcover or paperback that is the default on Goodreads. The suggested Buddy Read discussion schedule is as follows:

Week of 05/05
May 5th: Prologue + Chapters 1-2

Week of 05/06
May 6th: Chapters 3-4
May 7th: Chapters 5-7
May 8th: Chapters 8-10
May 9th: Chapters 11-13
May 10th: Chapters 14-16


PARTICIPANTS
~ Juliane
~ Dia

I have to say I was caught by surprise with this world. It is meant to take place not many years from now so I had to train myself to see that it is a parallel world and not ours. it was a little hard to imagine London would still be as it is in the 16th century or so in 2030s

the prologue made me angry. because children are made to do the dangerous work of delivering books and it's like they had no idea how to run this supposed business because making them run obviously catches the attention of the Garda.

It is an interesting exploration of what if the library of Alexandria didn't burn and we still had that knowledge and as we know knowledge has always been power and people in power always strives to limit what information is revealed to the masses. halfway through I went down a rabbit hole and had to search if we really lost a great deal of information and knowledge hahha

I was excited when Jess left home, for him to explore the world and books and I love the discover he had when he met the other students and made him realise that hey London wasn't all that great and other cities might actually be better

I still find it hard to wrap around my head that the Libraries are the only ones who can hold original copies of books. in our world the Alexandrian library burned multiple times and yet we have the ability to reprint books and print multiple original copies. but this world where all the knowledge has been preserved won't allow that? oh ok so they have the codex that gives them access to the books in the library instantly. like an ebook reader. so except for the rich who wants bragging rights to original copies, I really don't get the big deal.

Already the first page had me hooked, on the one hand the library of Alexandria surviving is so intriguing for the whole history of humanity on the other hand I wanna strangle who ever came up with the whole idea of women not being allowed to study due to men having more developed minds, so of to a good start here haha

I agree with you about needing a bit of time to imagine the kind of London described in the book considering the time it is set in, generally the combination of technology has me curious. So there are newspapers that rewrite themselves but a carriage works on steam? That seem to be quite different things in an approach to a clearly defined technological age.

That mixture is also very interesting considering that (if I remember the topic correctly) there are quite a few people that argue that the burning of the library of Alexandria actually set humanity back quite a bit for example in regards to the development of technology. Of course all of that is purely speculative but it leaves open so much space for development.
How far down the rabbit hole did you get regarding the lost knowledge?

I was also a bit shocked that Jess was only 10 in the prologue and there seemed to be even younger children to be a part of the circle of runners even though executions seem to be a common tool of punishment if they get caught.

Also the ruthlessness of the library left me a bit speechless for example regarding the automaton lions. Like the image of them existing is really cool but the way they just kill whatever gets in their way, even innocents, shows a cruel disregard for human lives by the people ruling this world.

The library seems to hold back knowledge even to its own scholars if the Ephemera about Gutenberg is any indication, the way they seem terrified of sharing knowledge and how scared of ones own citizens a ruling class has to be to get to that point is so creepy to me.

Yes! the way society thinks so little of human life and it was a little bit scary that Jess thinks that way too, the scene at the train station where he was more worried about the Burner's diary burning instead of the fact a man had died. In a way it's not so much different from ours, where some humans' lives are more valuable than others :(

So it seems a lot of people seem to think that we lost thousands of years of knowledge but many said that the library of Alexandria burned multiple times, not just once. Sister libraries would also have had copies of the information, just scattered in multiple places so some argue that we didn't really lose much. Others also said if we didn't lose the knowledge to fire, we would have lost it over time anyway because it was so difficult to maintain. Like we need a lot of people and it was all written on papyrus that would decay so it would have needed rewriting multiple times. Some people argued that the fires were good for us, as it kept people innovating and striving for more knowledge.

I'm a bit behind on the reading schedule but will hopefully catch up later today.

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, I hadn't really thought for example about sister libraries existing even back then because copying by hand must have been so hard and time-consuming.

Thats one of the things that really fascinates me with this story, on the one hand due to everyone having access to their own codex it is so easy to have access to the books provided by the library, like you said basically an e-reader, on the other hand it is so hard for everyone to know what is real and fake and how much knowledge one is missing out on if there is an entity like the library controlling what ends up on everybodies codex.
Also the whole idea of writing in a journal that will be included in the library after ones death seems kind of sinister but also makes me question if anybody checks the journals for information and if so who.

Yes, the scene at the train station was tragic both by how deperate the burner seemed to be as well as Jess reaction to what was happening as well as scary, how Jess knew straight away if the Garda had any suspisions on him there would be nobody coming to save him.

I enjoy reading about the various other students, its interesting how there seems to already be a core group whom we can assume will come quite far in their studies. I wonder what the reason is that a lot of the other students had better scores than Jess himself and what he knew about the test-scores in London. Is England too busy fighting with Wales to properly educate their pupils or are the scolars actually just better in other countries? It seems Jess father put enough money into tutors so they do seem available in their country.

Cheered at Jess solution of taking clothes from Dario, that guy is a piece of work, both his reaction to sharing a room as well as trying to take credit for saving the students from the Greek fire on the first day is so annoying showing how spoilt he is.

Also their teacher really seems to set impossible standards, I wonder if working at the library is actually that difficult or if they are just trying to weed out any possible heresy (whatever their definition of that is) although I do imagine their methods breed more resentment than compassion.
Although it does seem that wealth is unimportant if only knowledge counts during their education but of course it takes wealth to get there in the first place for example by being able to pay tutors. I agree it seems so very much like our own world when it comes to the value of human lives.

don't worry! I'm much more behind than you are. I haven't read the rest of your comments as I haven't read much more. hoping to catch up tmr as it's a public holiday here.

I didn't think about it that way, about missing knowledge and how much of it is true because you can't verify it as it's all controlled by the library. I guess I just trusted them to document knowledge properly, silly me hahha

Up to Ch 7

(view spoiler)[Also about the diaries! As you said that, the ephemera before Ch 3 intrigued me. So seems like some entity inspected the messages Jess received from his parents through the codex. That does make it very sinister.

I can't believe he's already being tasked with stealing a book and it is scary how his father seems to know what's going to happen beforehand. But also interesting how Jess is showing an affinity for being a scholar.

I still can't wrap my head around the whole library thing and its importance in this society. Because of that, it's quite hard to wrap my head around how the society functions. I feel like the worldbuilding is not fleshed out enough for me to believe it.

So turns out Wolfe does have their protection in mind the whole library thing is just getting more sinister by the second. This translation travel is horrendous and just like that we lost 2 more.

that scene where Wolfe asks Khalila to recite the history of what happened to Austria when they executed librarians was kinda cool.

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Public holiday for me today too and the weather was beautiful to sit on the balcony and do some reading :-)

However it is a bit slow going, am not quite sure if I'm tumbling into a bit of a general reading slump or if its this book in general. I'm generally enjoying the story and its characters and I know there are a couple more books in the series to properly build its world but some parts are leaving me a bit too confused at this point.

Till chapter 8

(view spoiler)[

I'm still not completely sure how the whole obscurists / transferring books to the library thing work, like I get the point but the logistics surrounding it are still rather hazy to me considering how important they are for the story and for example how we are supposed to care about Morgan and the horrible fate that being an obscurist seems to be.
Like there are people locked in the Iron Tower with special powers who are responsible for the whole workings of the library in the first place? I mean I understand why the higher powers would want to keep them out of the public eye because that basically means the obscurists are the main power behind the library and would bring about its fall if they turned on it.

However that basically leaves me with the same question you have written about, regarding how exactly this society works.
Does the library have big military power behind it, or some larger upper class that wants to control the rest of the world? We know from mankinds history that small groups can have enormous amount of power over larger clusters of society but never with the amount of longetivity the library in this story is supposed to have.

I can't imagine that something like the eradication of a whole country, like with the example of Austria, could be done just based in the knowledge of books and not some kind of magic or man-power. But I also found the scene itself with the negotiations in the tent to be quite powerful considering the different factions involved and like Jess said he propably misse dhalf of it while it was going on.

I agree the translation travel is so horrible, it brings us back to our earlier point of the library not giving a damn about human lives and the whole behaviour of the Artifex Magnus just reinforces that. I really hate that guy and we barely know anything about him yet.

What I do enjoy is the way Wolfes character keeps developing, I am very interested to know how far he has separated his life from the library already, especially considering the way it is mentioned how his loved ones were threatened when he made the suggestion about printing.

Also the various relationships between our student characters are quite fun to see developing, Dario and Khalila seem like an interesting couple considering how different they are whereas the whole Jess and Morgan dynamic seems a bit too geared towards tragedy.

Looking at a map of England I find it curious how far into the country the Welsh army has apparently already gotten if they are standing just in front of Oxford, that seems like a rather large piece of territory for them to cover to get to the city in the first place.

The whole war scenes seem to suggest that the library tries to stand somehow on neutral territory, so to not get involved in conflicts between countries unless any books are threatened and even then they rather sacrifice the people who are becoming uncomfortable for their system, but to me that seems to be a bit of a naive point of view for an organisation as powerful as the libary is supposed to be.

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I did actually manage to finish today, from a certain point on the story became way more compelling for me

Thoughts up till the end

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I'm still confused about some of the world-building, some things just haven't quite clicked for me yet, might clear up in later parts of the series, but for a first part some of it was just too many ideas that didn't go very far.

Also my confusion about how the library actually controls the rest of the world still exists, just like you I can't imagine that they just scare the people with the automatons, as seen in Oxford the automatons aren't invincible with enough man power.

However the control the library has accrued just through knowledge of all the people by even controlling their private journals must be huge, but even then if there is incriminating material there still needs to be the men-power to taking action against any possibly criminal activity.

I haven't read any content descriptions for the other books in the series yet, but I honestly do not believe that Thomas is actually dead. I feel like this is a case of that if we didn't see the body the character is most likely still alive. The description of how we, together with Jess, found out about his death just seemed too detached, for example compared to Dantons or even Proteros death. The Ephemera about his interrogation also seemed to leave that impression.

I found Wolfes arc the most interesting to be honest, we knew relatively early on that there was more to him but to me his development had the most intrigue. I love the relationship between him and Santi, they seem to complement each other really well. Its interesting that the library is so controlling yet "allows" the relationship between a (by now disgraced) scholar and the head of the local Garda.

Wolfes and Morgans fates also got us the deepest look into the sinister world of the library because wholy crap the revelations were dark and creepy. The obscurists basically being slaves who are hunted, locked up for life and basically expected to procreate all just for the library is a disgusting system. And all this just because they are scared of not being able to control the progress that would be brought on by other methods of distributing books.
Also the children like Wolfe being thrown out like dirt if they don't show the abilities of an obscurist made me shudder.

I do wonder how Morgan knew what was going on in the Iron Tower beforehand, what kind of connections she might have had for these insights.
I also find it hard to believe that Morgan found a way so quickly to communicate with Jess without anybody from the library really noticing.

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I've also just finished it. I'm glad the story became more compelling for you. honestly I was so done with the story because i truly cannot fathom a world like this. maybe it is plausible with the library destroying every technology that pops up which might threaten to destroy them, but as we see from the war, the library is meant to be a neutral party and countries and armies still exist. if the library was the only powerful entity controlling everyone, I could buy it, but then every country would have come up with their own library systems and they wouldn't just surrender control of libraries like that

I also agree with you, Wolfe's story was probably the most interesting, it feels like he should have been the MC instead. his familial ties definitely took my by surprise but it didn't make sense to me, yes his parents are under captivity, but then again the library needs them if obscurists are so rare, so logically they should hold more power but not here. imagine if all the obscurists just refuses to do the bidding of the library any more, then the whole system just collapses - that's definitely a major plot hole.

As for Thomas, I'm guessing your copy didn't have the epilogue at the end? or maybe it was a preview into the next book but there was an ephemera in my copy that touches more on it. I won't spoil it for you hahha

Funny you mention that, I did have a preview into the second part in my book as well but was hesitant to read it because I'm unsure of if and when to continue the series, but your comment was helpful in that regard to give myself a push to read the preview and I am kind of relieved cause I would have despised that ending for Thomas otherwise.