Waiting on Wednesday: The Reader (Sea of Ink and Bone) by Traci Chee

A Weekly Meme from Breaking the Spine.

On “Waiting on” Wednesday, each participating blog highlights one pre-release title that looks exciting to read and is eagerly awaited.

For my first “Waiting on” Wednesday, my highlighted release is:

The Reader by Traci Chee

Publication Date: September 13, 2016

From Amazon:

Sefia knows what it means to survive. After her father is brutally murdered, she flees into the wilderness with her aunt Nin, who teaches her to hunt, track, and steal. But when Nin is kidnapped, leaving Sefia completely alone, none of her survival skills can help her discover where Nin’s been taken, or if she’s even alive. The only clue to both her aunt’s disappearance and her father’s murder is the odd rectangular object her father left behind, an object she comes to realize is a book—a marvelous item unheard of in her otherwise illiterate society. With the help of this book, and the aid of a mysterious stranger with dark secrets of his own, Sefia sets out to rescue her aunt and find out what really happened the day her father was killed—and punish the people responsible.

With overlapping stories of swashbuckling pirates and merciless assassins, The Reader is a brilliantly told adventure from an extraordinary new talent.

I recently read an excerpt of this book from First to Read through Penguin Books. What really grabbed me was the beautiful prose in the prologue about books and reading, and then the first few chapters were also action packed and easy to get a sense of the world from. I’m excited to see how the rest of the book completes the story that the excerpt started.