My apologies for the lack of posts over the past week. I traveled to a library conference that was two time zones away, which really mushed up my brain.
Jo and Esther Kalotay have a complicated relationship. As sisters, they love each other and want to support each other. As their parents’ daughters, they can’t be anywhere near each other. Families are complicated but I’ve never seen one quite as complicated as the tangle of obligations than what I found in Emma Törzs’s Ink Blood Sister Scribe. Even stranger, the weirdness is all because of books. Magical books.
Jo lives a lonely life in the Kalotay family home in Vermont. She takes care of her father’s collection of handwritten books. These books all contain strange spells—some can briefly suspect the power of gravity, others can hide a whole house from everyone, a few can even kill. A touch of blood and a dash of herbs can unlock their magic but what frustrates Jo is the fact that she can’t create her own magic; she can only use others’. Her sister, Esther, is on the other side of the world, in Antarctica. Every year Esther has to pack everything and travel. It doesn’t really matter where as long as she’s moving on November 2. She doesn’t know exactly why. Her father never told her anything other than something bad would happen to her and her sister if she doesn’t keep bouncing around the globe.
We’ll never know how long the sisters might have continued their enforced separation and unhappiness if Esther hadn’t fallen in love with a lovely Australian woman while in their research station in Antarctica. The November deadline passes and things start to get weird. Esther picks up on signs of magic she remembers from her childhood. A batch of newcomers arrives at the station and Esther suddenly doesn’t know who she can trust. Then the worst happens: Esther’s girlfriend is attacked and terribly injured. When Esther visits, the attacker finds them both. Whoever has been hunting the Kalotay sisters has found one of them.
A third narrator, Nicholas, helps us readers start to figure out what’s going on. The Kalotay sisters were kept in the dark by their father; they were only told to keep doing certain things but never why. (Fictional parents, please tell your kids the whole story. It will save a lot of problems in the future.) Nicholas’s uncle, who runs their magical book empire, is another person who never told the whole truth. All Nicholas knows is that his blood can make magical books and that, if he were ever to try and strike out on his own, evil people will capture him and bleed him dry to get his magic. When he was a young teen, even was even kidnapped and lost an eye before his uncle recovered him. He sticks close to home but the confinement and constant pressure to produce have chafed for years. When someone starts pushing Nicholas to question what he’s been told over the years, Nicholas is only too happy to go investigating.
The attack on Esther and her girlfriend kicks off a globe-hopping magical adventure for all three of our narrators. Horrific mysteries are uncovered. True friends are made. Spells are cast. And, best of all for Esther, Jo, and Nicholas, questions are finally answered. Enjoyed this original contemporary fantasy novel quite a bit. My only quibble is that I would’ve liked it if things hadn’t been quite so easy for our protagonists. There are twists in this book but they don’t have to struggle very hard to come out victorious when the baddies manage to gain the upper hand. That said, the climax of this book is pretty spectacular. My quibble is really very minor.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.