Ink

December 18, 2017
An urgent fear of otherness permeates Broadway’s eerie debut, set in a society where tattoos tell a person’s life story and to be without them is to be unknowable. In Saintstone, lawbreakers are marked and publicly shamed, babies who die before getting their first tattoo are forgotten, and so-called “blanks” (whose bodies are free of tattoos) are loathed. Sixteen-year-old Leora’s father is dead, his skin dried and bound into a book; she must unravel her family’s secrets before the community’s elders make a determination that he is to be forgotten, and the pages of his book burned. Through it’s not fully clear why tattoos and skin books are the only ways a person can be remembered in this world, Broadway uses her unsettling premise to contemplate grief and loss, attempts to neatly categorize people and decisions as right or wrong, and the courage to push against norms in ways big and small. As Leora enters the adult world as an apprentice inker, Broadway elegantly depicts her discoveries and the way power can become manipulative, controlling, and deceptive. Ages 14–up.

November 1, 2017

Gr 6 Up-What if your life's story was tattooed on your body for your whole community to see? In Leora's world, it is. Citizens are "inked" with tattoos to represent everything from their careers and family trees to the great joys and sorrows of their lives. When someone dies, his or her life is determined worthy-or not-by the government assessment of one's ink. If you're worthy, your skin becomes a book, a treasured and honored keepsake held by your family to remember you. If not, your skin is burned, your stories lost forever. The death of Leora's father still hangs heavily over what should be a joyful time-graduation, being assigned a prestigious career. As her father's trial comes nearer, Leora learns a terrible secret that might ruin her father's legacy and change her life forever. The promising opening chapters do not quite deliver. Leora believably grieves her father's death while questioning herself and deeply held societal beliefs, but other characters and story lines feel inconsistent. Few characters can accurately "read" ink-that is, see the story behind the tattoo-making the premise of a society without secrets somewhat perplexing. Still, an interesting concept combined with action and intrigue will hook teen readers. VERDICT Purchase where lighter dystopia and realistic science fiction are popular.-Kelsey Johnson-Kaiser, St. Paul Public Library

Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2017
"Watch out for the blanks."Sixteen-year-old Leora takes her father's dying words as a warning against those who refuse the sacred obligation to record every deed as observable tattoos, eventually to be bound and reverently preserved by their descendants. So the discrepancies between her father's own "skin book" and her memories shake all of Leora's comfortable assumptions. Broadway presents an intriguing dystopian conceit: an apparently benevolent society, completely transparent, valuing persons of every color equally (although it's considered "lucky" and "refined" to be "pale" like Leora)--yet also riddled with bigotry, paranoia, and hypocrisy. Still, some of the ambiguities are just confusing: are the "blanks" individuals who are exercising free choice or an entirely separate race? Is Leora responsible for her own decisions, or is she a special, predestined savior? Leora's present-tense narration slowly dribbles out trickles of plot amid torrents of mind-numbing exposition, studded with portentous dreams and twists on traditional folk tales. While her voice--naive, vacillating, and constantly self-deprecating--can be irritating, it's far less frustrating than the overused device in which characters inexcusably conceal vital information in order to drive events. As these deceptions finally crumble, Leora is provoked into a series of rash choices, culminating in a flamboyant gesture rejecting her entire social order...and neatly setting up a sequel. The gorgeous cover, highly original premise, and dramatic climax can't make up for tedious pacing and a muddled message. (Fantasy. 11-17)

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November 1, 2017
Grades 7-11 In the town of Saintstone, everyone wears their lives on their skinthe good and the bad. Under the guise of maintaining honesty and transparency, every citizen has their life accomplishments and mistakes tattooed on their bodies; after death, that skin is preserved, turned into a book, and judged. Leora has always dreamed of becoming an inker, responsible for tattooing people's stories, but when her father dies and the marks on his skin tell a darker story than she imagined, she begins to see into her community's murkier underworld. As her government grows harsher and stories of unmarked outcasts, called blanks, begin to circulate, Leora begins to question everything she was certain about, including the world she lives in and her place in it. With echoes of fairy tales and Greek and Egyptian mythologies, this debut reads like a natural successor to Lois Lowry's The Giver (1993). Leora's growing awareness of the less-than-utopian aspects of her society is compelling, and this offers many moral questions that will linger long with readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)