The Reader by Traci Chee

The Reader (Sea of Ink and Gold, #1)

by Traci Chee
Published on September 13th 2016
Pages: 442

Once there was, and one day there will be. This is the beginning of every story.
Sefia lives her life on the run. After her father is viciously murdered, she flees to the forest with her aunt Nin, the only person left she can trust. They survive in the wilderness together, hunting and stealing what they need, forever looking over their shoulders for new threats. But when Nin is kidnapped, Sefia is suddenly on her own, with no way to know who’s taken Nin or where she is. Her only clue is a strange rectangular object that once belonged to her father, something she comes to realize is a book.
Though reading is unheard of in Sefia’s world, she slowly learns, unearthing the book’s closely guarded secrets, which may be the key to Nin’s disappearance and discovering what really happened the day her father was killed.

Looking at reviews of this book it seems like this is either a book you adore or one that you don’t understand at all.  I’m in the don’t understand category.

The premise seems good.  A girl’s family is killed and she goes on the run with the thing that they were guarding – a book.  No one reads in this time so she doesn’t know why the book is important.

Ok, that seems like a good start.  But it starts to break down quickly.

RiverSongSpoilers

She vaguely remembers her mother playing with blocks with letters on them with her until her father tells them that it is too dangerous.  From that vague memory of a few letters, she somehow teaches herself to read.  Not buying it.  She starts reading a story in the book about pirates.  Then she rescues a boy who is being held to fight other boys to the death.  They chase after people who captured him and took her aunt away.  Eventually, the pirates from the book show up in real life.  Yeah.   But then she can’t find the story about the pirates in the book anymore.  Is the book gigantic or does it change or what?  Suddenly, it supposedly contains the stories of everyone but the only story that we see from it is the pirates.  Then there are people chasing the girl because she has magic but it isn’t clear whether they want her or the book or what.  Then they get captured but they run away.  The end.

What we don’t know:

  • Why is she magic?
  • Why do some people have magic of various kinds and others don’t?
  • Why are books outlawed?
  • What or who made this book so powerful?
  • Is Archer (the guy she rescued) the embodiment of a prophecy or just some guy?

I kept reading this book because I was certain it had to go somewhere and have everything tie together eventually.  I was wrong.  It wasted a great premise.  This is supposedly the first book in a series so maybe it will all make sense eventually but I don’t want to slog through more books to find out.