Ink and bone

The Great Library of Alexandria never fell. In this version of the modern world it has grown ruthless and powerful, with a branch in every major city, and it decides what knowledge reaches ordinary people. Alchemy lets it deliver the text of history's greatest works on demand, while owning a book is strictly forbidden.

Jess Brightwell comes from a family that deals in illegal books, and most of what he knows he learned from them. He still believes the Library has real value. His family has sent him to spy, and he is now in the last months of training for a place in the Library's service, where his loyalties start to be tested.

The trouble begins when a friend of Jess builds a device that could change the world, and in doing so commits heresy without meaning to. Jess learns that the people who run the Library rate knowledge above any human life. Both heretics and books are about to burn.

This is an alternate-history fantasy built on a single idea: a world shaped by one institution's control of information. It is a story of divided loyalties and rising danger, with a training setting that gives way to a harsher conflict as the Library's methods come into view.