The Spellshop

“Between the stress of their escape and the effort of their night-and-day sail, she felt like a book so well read that its pages curled and spine cracked.”

This quote from early in the novel establishes the narrative’s overall tone and its protagonist. Although the scene is one of “stress and effort,” the narrator nonetheless uses an image that brings to mind safety and comfort. It also helps define Kiela’s character as someone who sees the world through the lens of books.

“But without the library, without its stacks and its order and its historical, cultural, and political importance…What was the point? Who was she with all of it gone?”

This moment establishes how firmly Kiela’s identity is tied to her work and the journey she needs to take to better understand herself. Later, the library’s “stacks and order” come to signify something much more negative, but at this point, it represents safety and security. While its attributes—history, culture, and politics—remain just as prominent, Kiela comes to value something outside these beliefs.

“She was going to have to talk to people.”

This line is structured as a single-clause, standalone paragraph at the very end of Chapter 3. It’s positioned as a traditional cliffhanger, which gives its seemingly incongruous meaning a comical quality. However, its deeper meaning reveals that Kiela is facing one of her biggest fears in leaving her well-established comfort zone behind.