Elizabeth Rose read and liked Rich's review of Ink: The Book of All Hours:

"This is definitely the best pair of books I've read in a long time. It was a lot of fun learning to read the parallel stories throughout the first book until you began to understand the idea of time as a 3D construct. And then in Ink, you have to sta...more This is definitely the best pair of books I've read in a long time. It was a lot of fun learning to read the parallel stories throughout the first book until you began to understand the idea of time as a 3D construct. And then in Ink, you have to start thinking of it as a fractured structure which still holds a formidable sort of order. I loved the characters, and how their plot lines come together in the end. It constantly read like a different book than the 50 pages right before it, and I loved it for that.

The only downside for me was that they didn't start using my favorite character as a focus until the second book. The book had a consistent six characters in Vellum, but it felt like he needed to expand to seven for Ink. So an earlier minor character was given a serious revamp, which felt very strange. The book is, at it's core, about four people with three sidekicks... sort of. I just happened to like two of the sidekicks a lot more.

Overall, these were two amazing books.(less) "

Elizabeth Rose read and liked Craig Couden's review of Ink: The Book of All Hours:

"Wow. This book is really good.

To try to sum up the plot of Ink and its precursor Vellum would take up much more space and time than I care to expend. But in a nutshell: The world has ended, reality has shattered, and seven people try t...more Wow. This book is really good.

To try to sum up the plot of Ink and its precursor Vellum would take up much more space and time than I care to expend. But in a nutshell: The world has ended, reality has shattered, and seven people try to put together pieces of themselves that are shattered and scattered across reality while they try to find the mythical/ real Book that is the map/key to the universe. In a nutshell.

Ink is one of the more difficult simply to read. narration jumps back and forth between characters and plot lines, all of which revolve around similar characters with same names. Keeping the Jacks, Guys, and Joeys, etc. straight was difficult always and impossible a number of times. However, confusion has a purpose. What emerges from the jumble of narrative strings is not the story of many characters, but of the same characters in the same roles, Jack the hero, Joey the traitor/ enemy, Anna the warrior. Duncan creates archetypes out of these characters and after a while the reader can see these defined roles in whichever narration is being told.

There is so much more to be taken from this book that I'm not going to write about here. It's a challengeing book, no question, but one of the best I've read in years.(less) "