New American Library; 374 pages; Amazon |
The novel is set in a world where the Great Library is available in every city. While people can have access to the wide-range of books in the library, you cannot own any books. Alchemy (aka the government) wants to control what written knowledge is available to the people.
The main character is Jess Brightwell, who believes in the value that each book possesses in the library. However, most of his knowledge came from the illegal books owned by his family. At the request of his father, Jess joins the Library training program, which is located in Alexandria. Of course his father has other reasons for why he wanted Jess to join, such as stealing books.
The training program is led by Scholar Christopher Wolfe, who doesn't want to teach a bunch of teenagers the way of the Great Library. One by one the students are kicked out the program, but Jess makes it to the final assignment, which involves searching for lost books in a war zone area.
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