This is yet another really hard book to review because I didn't like it, which theoretically is a "one star" rating on Goodreads. I constantly wish I could dual-rank books to answer both "did I like it" and 'was it good". This one, I did not like. This one, it was good. Not great, good. It has good world building. The writing is good. The characters feel better rounded with more grit than a slight book like this would normally have. Because Judy will like this one. 
 But I didn't like it. 
 I didn't like it because it's another dystopic world full of mean people doing mean things for reasons that don't mean (see what I did there) a whole lot to me with bad infrastructure. I was in a somewhat similar situation with Harry August (hated the villain, the unlikeable characters whereas here I hated the society), but I gave that one 3 stars on a book I didn't like because it was head and shoulders above even this one. This one was just fine in writing. Not superior, like Harry August, but good. But I didn't like it. 
 The world consists of an oppressed society whose Library of Alexandria not only wasn't destroyed but has become a major power broker (if not the major power broker) in the world of ideas and information. As Stan Lee put it, with great power comes great responsibility and great opportunity to craft a story around the breakdown of those ideas. It's a very YA book (don't expect literature), and one whose world gets fuzzy if you look too closely at it. 
 Ink and Bone is strongly influenced by the boarding school / Harry Potter genre. A semi-innocent enters, struggles to excel with an arbitrary capricious yet caring Snape-like teacher figure, who is involved in politics that extend beyond the classroom. Points for that. I like that kind of story. At the same time, the book stupidly limits highly competitive admissions to six places, with an ongoing war, high casualties, etc. It's a dumb artificial limit that strikes me as irrational as the way the Divergent Dauntless got rid of so many of its potential cannon fodder before they were useful enough to use as, well, canon [sic] fodder. 
 Even in a competitive training program, someone has to end up doing the accounts, arranging for food deliveries, managing janitors, and so forth. These jobs are important too. And don't get me started on celebrity "princesses" books without in-house staff. Politics, like war, is never just individuals. 
 There's magic. Some people are born with special talents (see "Harry Potter, Influence of") but these aren't really well explored although they provide a lot of the narrative push towards the end of the book. 
 There's also a rebellion. (See "Wars, Star, volume IV") and young idealists being caught up in the sweep. 
 Lots of great ideas, but they didn't gel, and didn't create anything new and exciting. The thematically-similar City of Stairs isn't perfect but man, it delivered a coherent exciting experience *and* wrote on a metalevel about Man's relationship with God and Religion. This piece of slight fluff didn't come anywhere close. 
 In the end: one star for "didn't like" plus a bonus star for "pat on the back, good work"