More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
“What’s … our greatest question?” Kat breathes: “How do you live forever?”
left behind a book he called CODEX VITAE—book of life. The book was encrypted, and Manutius gave the key to only one person: his great friend and partner, Griffo Gerritszoon.”
“We believe that when this secret is finally unlocked, every member of the Unbroken Spine who ever lived … will live again.”
2nd coming
the air smells different. It smells like books.
codex vitae of Aldus Manutius. It does not exist anywhere outside of this library.”
holy grail
every member of this fellowship produces his or her own codex vitae, or book of life.
Walking the stacks in a library, dragging your fingers across the spines—it’s hard not to feel the presence of sleeping spirits.
This is Corvina.
Ajax Penumbra
greek hero of trojan war
We’re a little Rebel Alliance, and Penumbra is our Obi-Wan. We all know who Corvina is.
“He’s the warrior, you’re the wizard, I’m the rogue. This conversation never happened.”
team in Mountain View—we should tell them about this. It’s called Google Forever. They work on life extension. Cancer treatment, organ regeneration, DNA repair.”
1-5-1-5. That’s the year Aldus Manutius died—or,
the books I love most are like open cities, with all sorts of ways to wander in. This thing is a fortress with no front gate. You’re meant to scale the walls, stone by stone.
like this book
This is Gerritszoon.
the First Wizard is going to betray them and hand them over to the Wyrm Queen.
i hate these sci fi sagas
The characters are appealing archetypes: Fernwen the scholarly dwarf is the everynerd, doing his best to live through the adventure. Telemach Half-Blood is the hero you wish you could be.
wish you could be.
these characters are archetypes too. no need to tell/ show inbtead
the magic is in its making alone. Do you understand? There is no sorcery here—none that I can detect.”
like writing
“Griffo made an instrument so perfect that even the dead must rise to hear its call. He made it with his hands, without spells or dragon-songs. I
Everybody brings a laptop—” “Do people even look at one another?” “Not really. Everything that matters is on your screen. There’s an agenda that rearranges itself.
english meetings much better
Books: boring. Codes: awesome. These are the people who are running the internet.
These days, the phone only carries bad news. It’s all “your student loan is past due” and “your uncle Chris is in the hospital.” If it’s anything fun or exciting, like an invitation to a party or a secret project in the works, it will come through the internet.
He’s using my first name a lot. Mostly it’s salesmen who do that.
Maybe Penumbra’s schemes failed because he didn’t have enough help. Maybe he didn’t have a Mat or a Neel, an Ashley or a Kat—until
trustt and friendshipp
puzzle
thisbookis one big puzzle
Penumbra casts only the faintest digital shadow.
name
When you read a book, the story definitely happens inside your head. When you listen, it seems to happen in a little cloud all around it, like a fuzzy knit cap pulled down over your eyes:
Getting stolen is one of the best things that can happen to an object. Stolen stuff recirculates. Stays out of the ground.”
TABITHA TRUDEAU IS OLIVER’S BEST FRIEND from Berkeley.
The Accession Table, I learned from Oliver, is an enormous database that tracks all artifacts in all museums, everywhere.
The Accession Table helps catch forgeries:
PLEASE CONTACT: CONSOLIDATED UNIVERSAL LONG-TERM STORAGE LLC
Library of Congress keeps most of its books outside of D.C.? They have, like, seven hundred miles of shelves. All warehouses.”
You know, I’m really starting to think the whole world is just a patchwork quilt of crazy little cults, all with their own secret spaces, their own records, their own rules.
Here, in the most advanced off-site storage facility serving the historical entertainment sector anywhere west of the Mississippi, you don’t find the artifacts. The artifacts find you.
ZULU-2591.
year of moffats birth reversed
we’re like an orphanage for a lot of things,”
Ajax Penumbra is the blue-eyed shade in the dungeon of the Wyrm Queen’s tower. I am absolutely sure of it.
I get it: the floors are a metaphor for the code-breaking techniques of the Unbroken Spine. Moffat is using the tower to tell the story of his own path through the fellowship.
You raced through the ranks, you became one of the bound, maybe just to get access to the Reading Room—and then you bound up their secrets in a book of your own. You hid them in plain sight.
moffat
The mountains are a message from Aldrag the Wyrm-Father.
If you were going to make a message last, how would you do it?
He went on a pilgrimage.
gerritzoon
There’s no secret formula in this book. There’s no magic incantation. If there truly is a secret to immortality, it’s not here.
