Ink, Iron, and Glass

It feels like Clare had a general idea of what she wanted to write in Ink, Iron and Glass. Perhaps even a set of rough character sketches, since the characters are fairly well fleshed out. It just didn't feel like it was ever hammered into anything solid. There were a lot of fabulous concepts in this story but, truth be told, they didn't follow a cohesive path. For instance, worldbooks were a really cool concept to me. The ability to create an entire functioning world, simply by scribing it into one of these, sounded like something I'd normally fall in love with. The problem was that the descriptions of this process only skimmed the surface through the whole story. I never saw deeper than the idea itself, and that was the case for most of what would have normally caught my interest.

The pace feels maddeningly slow for most of the book, and then picks up in a mad rush to the end. It was really hard to feel invested in the story. Each time that I thought something was starting to peak my interest, the book would meander away on a tangent and my questions went unanswered. I was left holding a handful of story threads, rather than the tapestry that I know they were trying so hard to weave.

So 2 stars to this book, because I only 1 star books I didn't finish. I finished this, but it was a rough road.