Ink, Iron, and Glass (Ink, Iron, and Glass, #1)

by Gwendolyn Clare

The rich world of The Clockwork Prince meets the political turmoil of The Eyre Affair.

As a prodigy in the science of scriptology, Elsa can write new worlds into creation. She lives in one such world called Veldana. When her mother is abducted, Elsa follows her trail into the real world, where she must recruit the help of a secret society of fellow 'mad' geniuses who are similarly gifted in powers of mechanics and alchemy. Here, she meets Leo, a mechanist with a smart mouth and a tragic past.

With Leo's help, she unveils a political conspiracy with her own family at the center. Her mother's most valuable and secret creation, a scriptology book with the power to edit the real world, is also missing, and Elsa must find it and her mother before her enemies do.

• ISBN10: 125029455X
• ISBN13: 9781250294555
• Publish Date: 1 March 2019 (first published 20 February 2018)
• Publish Status: Active
• Out of Print: 25 June 2022
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Square Fish
• Format: Paperback
• Pages: 352
• Language: English

Reviews

[Empress of Sass]

Proper review to come 2.5 stars. It does not live up to the potential of the premise. I found it dull and lacking magic.

[Amber (The Literary Phoenix)]

I desperately wanted to love this book, but it's hard to love a book that meets none of your expectations. Steampunk and I already have a mixed history, but I really thought that the worldbuilding in this one was going to steal my heart.

Except... it didn't.

The worldbuilding is light at best, and for a book that boasts people who can write worlds into existence, there was a whole lot of "And she climbed on the train and sat across from him" and nearly enough, "She squished into the poorly repaired letter seat, the clack-clack-clack of the rails underneath worsening her headache while outside the train window, a rainy landscape rushed by." ... Okay, I made both those up, but see my point? It's really easy to skate atop the surface of this one rather than to be wrapped up and enjoy it.

The same for the character - tropes and cliches with a lot of characterization in conversation rather than facial features or fidgeting with dress skirts. I wanted more from this, and I didn't get it.

ALL THAT SAID. This feels like something that a lot of other readers, the ones who aren't looking for deeply involved fantasy, will enjoy. I think that for a debut author, there's a lot of potential with Gwendolyn Clare even though this books really wasn't for me, and I'll be keeping an eye out for future releases outside this series.

[violetpeanut]

DNF at 50%. It's not terrible, I just don't feel invested enough in the characters or the story to continue. Maybe someday I'll pick it back up.

[tweetybugshouse]

This is a wonderful debut novel that is a rich steampunk feel where the world is created using the science of scriptology .  Scriptology is a science magic hybrid where the "scientist" can actually create a new world by scripting or writing it into existence.  This concept alone is what first drew me into the book.  I always drawn to books about books or books about creating worlds.  This one echoes a bit like the Glass Sentence series.   I was quite delighted that not only does the world focus on the Scriptology science but a wide variety of them to the point where our main character ends up in a home where the kids are masters of different types of sciences at once.  The term used in the book for them is Polymath.  

The descriptions of the worlds that are visited and also the description of how the  Scriptology  works and is put into practice are quite well done.  The love interest is slow to build and the final parts of the book make it so heart wrenching that you really feel for our main characters.  It a wonderful start and i almost hope it expands beyond just the planned two books.