Common Sense Media Review
By Mary Eisenhart
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Science, romance, alt-history mix in genre-bending tale.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 13+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Read
What's the Story?
As INK, IRON, AND GLASS opens, 16-year-old Elsa is looking forward to more responsibility for her native Veldana, a "scribed" (authored) world her scriptologist mother has succeeded in making independent of its Earth creator and enhancing ever since. But after her mother is abducted and her work stolen, Elsa travels to Earth to get her back. Landing in an alternate version of 19th-century Italy, she quickly finds herself in the Casa della Pazzia, an unusual (and sentient) dwelling where the Order of Archimedes keeps "mad" kids, i.e. those with genius skills in scriptology, alchemy, or mechanics, to keep them safe from the Church, which wants to kill them, and ambitious political leaders, who want to use their skills to grab power. Elsa, it turns out, is good at all three specialties, which makes her a really big target. It's a lot for her to take in, even without tragic, good-looking Leo in the picture.
Is It Any Good?
Clockwork bugs, swordplay, alchemy, flamethrowers, monster machines, virtual reality, politics, romance -- you've seen it all before, but rarely in such a genre-bending gallop to the cliff's edge. Ink, Iron, and Glass takes readers to a steampunk-ish 19th century Italy where history's taken a different turn, an arch-villain has his own plans on the subject, and a girl from another world finds herself dealing with romance in this one:
"He was like a fine piece of clockwork that had been carelessly dropped too many times, the delicate gears jarred apart so they spun and spun but never connected. Broken. ... Oh, how she itched to open his chest and set the gears straight again. The thought surprised her; she'd often felt the urge to fix objects, but this sudden desire to fix a person ... where did that come from?"
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about stories where fictional characters interact with real ones, as they do in Ink, Iron, and Glass. What's the appeal of this device?
Ink, Iron, and Glass speculates about what would have happened if Garibaldi hadn't united Italy in the 19th century. Can you come up with a story about how things might be different if a particular historical event had gone a different way?
If someone came to our world from a virtual or fictional one, what do you think they'd find hardest to deal with?
Book Details
- Author :
- Genre : Fantasy
- Topics : Fantasy ( Magic ) , Adventures , Family Stories ( Siblings ) , Friendship , History , STEM
- Book type : Fiction
- Publisher : Imprint
- Publication date : February 20, 2018
- Publisher's recommended age(s) : 14 - 18
- Number of pages : 336
- Available on : Nook, Audiobook (abridged), Hardback, Apple Books, Kindle
- Last updated : September 30, 2025
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