The Reader

Title: The Reader (Sea of Ink and Gold #1)
Author: Traci Chee

Initial Thoughts: I love Easter Eggs in books!!!!!

Yes, I was the girl who, halfway through the Artemis Fowl series, no longer needed a key to read what was written along the bottom of the page in Gnomish. I will say, Traci Chee was sneaky with hers. I wondered about the smudges, but didn't do anything until I found the ones by the page numbers, which I didn't notice until nearly 100 pages in (as I said, sneaky). Then I had to go all the way back to the beginning and check each page, and this time I did actually make note of which words the smudges were next to. Though, the first smudge didn't seem to be next to anything important (it seemed to be the word "through"). The rest made sense (and were a little predictable - the smudges, not the page number ones - those were fun to find). It took me a while to get into the book, mostly because I didn't actually pick it up right away. I actually renewed it once before I ever opened it. Once I started, though, it didn't take me long to get invested. I love the idea of words having power and how we only live as long as our stories are told. It actually reminds me of a quote from another book, "Stories are as immortal as the gods" (The Tree of Avalon series by T.A. Barron). Stories live on as long as they are told and gods live in the stories. Once you stop telling a story, it's forgotten, it dies. The gods of old only live as long as we remember their stories. Once those stories are forgotten, those gods no longer exist. Like in Coco: you only exist in the afterlife as long as there is someone alive who remembers you. Once you are forgotten, you cease to exist. Honestly, it's fascinating because stories are how we live and how we communicate. it used to be that stories were told orally and passed on as such, changed and embellished with each retelling and each storyteller, and that was how people learned about their history. Now, with the written word, we can write things down so they can last longer and stay closer to the truth than was possible so long ago, but stories are still how we communicate. Think about your day-to-day interactions. "How was your day?" "Oh, it was terrible! This happened...." "What's your opinion on this?" "Oh, it's great! I had this experience once..." (Most people don't talk exactly like that, but you get my point.) We know people through the stories of their lives. If you want to know why someone thinks or acts a certain way, you need to know the story behind their reasoning. There's always a story. Even our social media world is focused on story. On Facebook you can "Add to your story" with pictures of what you're doing. You post about how "this one thing" happened to you today, or how so-and-so did this or that. Gossip is passing along stories. Twitter is the tl;dr version of storytelling: you get to the basic facts to sum up your story. "When such-and-such happens to you #life#storytelling". Instragram is storytelling through pictures. Telling stories is what we do. It's how we communicate. It's how we live. So in a world where stories cannot be written down and preserved for years on end, of course you want to live a life full enough to be remembered, for your stories to be told years after you die, because that's the only way the world will remember you. You don't think much about how the written word has changed our society, but it really has. Through writing our stories down, our lives can be remembered by people hundreds of years later and across the globe. Think of the historical characters you learn about in school, the scientists and philosophers, the inventors, leaders, and warriors, writers and artists that have shaped our society today. We only know about them and what they did because their stories were written down. We share our stories on social media with people all across the world so we can be remembered by people we've never even met face-to-face. Well, I guess I should actually get to the book (I tend to get off on tangents a lot, if you haven't noticed). I enjoyed the characters. The plot is good. Captain Reed is fun and I enjoyed learning that he was a real person still living and fighting and exploring and that we actually got to meet him. Lon and the Second turning out to be her parents was a surprise. Fun. I liked Archer and Sefia was good, too. No complaints on any of the characters (except maybe that one army dude you meet for all of three pages - what was with that?). I think maybe I got a little too caught up with the Easter Eggs and the idea of stories that I didn't focus so much on the characters, but I did really like the book and I can't wait to read more.

Rating: 5/5 (okay, so I gave it a 4 on Goodreads, but that's just because I likely won't reread it in the future unless it's many years down the road, which usually takes one star off the rating for me, but I did really like the story so here I'm going to go ahead and give it a 5)