Ein Meer aus Tinte und Gold
Traci Chee's The Reader (published in German as Ein Meer aus Tinte und Gold, translated by Sylke Hachmeister) opens the Sea of Ink and Gold trilogy. After her father is murdered, Sefia escapes with her aunt Nin, who teaches her to hunt, track, and steal. When Nin is kidnapped, Sefia is left alone with only one clue to both disappearances: a strange rectangular object her father left behind, which she slowly realizes is a book — an object unheard of in her otherwise illiterate society.
Teaching herself to read, Sefia discovers the book is full of stories, including tales of the swashbuckling Captain Reed and his crew sailing the seas of Kelanna. After rescuing Archer, a boy so traumatized by forced fighting-pit matches that he has lost the ability to speak, she begins reading to him — and the two are drawn together into a wider legend that turns out to be more real than either of them expected.
A girl raised in hiding who teaches herself to read using her murdered father's mysterious book.
A boy rescued by Sefia from forced fighting-pit matches, left unable to speak.
The story is told through multiple shifting timelines and perspectives that may initially feel disconnected, but these threads gradually weave together to form a single, cohesive history.
This title serves as the first installment in the Sea of Ink and Gold trilogy, which continues with the sequels The Speaker and The Storyteller.