Ink Blood Sister Scribe

Ink Blood Sister Scribe, published in 2023, is Emma Törzs’s debut novel. Törzs earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana in Missoula. Set between Antarctica, Vermont, and London, the novel exemplifies magical realism: It takes place in a realistic world but centers around magical books written in the blood of Scribes. Through half-sisters and protagonists Joanna and Esther, the novel explores the complexities of Family, Estrangement, and Personal Identity. In the tradition of 20th-century Latin American magical realism, Törzs employs genre to offer cultural critique and explores The Relationship between Responsibility and Power to highlight the problematic functions of establishment, prejudice, and exploitation. A book about books, Ink Blood Sister Scribe also includes metafictional elements and delves into The Magic of Books. Ink Blood Sister Scribe is a New York Times Notable Book of the Year and a Good Morning America Book Club pick.

This guide refers to the 2023 William Morrow edition.

Plot Summary

Ink Blood Sister Scribe begins two years after Abe Kalotay’s death—caused by a spell book with a “vampire” anti-tampering spell. Abe’s younger daughter, Joanna, has remained in the family’s Vermont home alone, protecting their collection of magical books. Esther left home at 18 after learning that because she is immune to magic, the protective wards used on the house can’t protect its other occupants if Esther is present. While Esther originally believes she must travel each year on the same day in order to avoid being caught by those who killed her mother, Isabel, Esther eventually learns that it is for the purpose of avoiding being detected by a spell that locates Scribes: Rare individuals with the ability to write magical books. However, having formed a relationship with a woman named Pearl, Esther decides to stay in the Antarctic research station beyond the day on which she is supposed to leave.

Esther soon notices signs of magic in the station: dried blood on a mirror and the smell of herbs. She attempts to communicate through a mirror, and a note emerges instructing her to return home, accompanied by plane tickets and passports under an assumed name. While she isn’t aware of the sender’s identity until much later in the novel, the message is from her mother, Isabel, whom Esther had believed was killed soon after her birth.

Isabel has been using a pseudonym, Dr. Maram Ebla, in her role at the Library, a powerful collection of magical books held in London. When she became pregnant with Esther, a child she didn’t want, Isabel left Abe and entered a relationship with Richard Maxwell, the head of the Library. Isabel and Richard live with Nicholas, a Scribe who believes Richard to be his uncle, but it is eventually revealed that Richard is using an immortality spell and is the original founder of the Library. Nicholas survives an ostensible assassination attempt, which he later learns was a ruse devised by Richard to scare him. The bullet was fired by Richard’s bodyguard, Collins, after a spell to turn bullets into bees had been enacted.

In Vermont, Joanna goes to visit her mother (and Esther’s stepmother) Cecily. Cecily hasn’t lived in the family home since her attempt to destroy the books years earlier. After they eat lunch together, Cecily enacts a spell to keep Joanna in Cecily’s house to prevent Joanna from returning home and setting the protective wards. They eventually reach a deal: Joanna will allow Cecily into the family house to do what she needs to do if she promises not to go into the basement or interfere with the wards. Cecily uses a mirror in Esther’s old room to send the postcard in which Esther informs her that she is still in Antarctica, along with a message asking the recipient if everything is under control and for an end to their agreement. Later in the novel, Cecily is finally able to reveal that she was contacting Isabel/Maram regarding their plan to keep Esther safe from Richard and asking Maram to remove a silencing spell Cecily has been under for more than 20 years.

Afraid for herself and for Pearl, Esther makes plans to leave Antarctica on the next cargo plane. Pearl departs to go skiing with a new arrival at the station, Trev. He returns to inform Esther that Pearl has had an accident. When Esther reaches the station’s medical clinic to visit Pearl, Trev takes out a gun.

In London, Maram provides Nicholas subtle instructions that lead him and Collins through a bookshelf into Richard’s study. They see Nicholas’s eyeball in a jar, and Nicholas realizes that a “kidnapping” when he was 13 was actually orchestrated by Richard, as part of the immortality spell that has been keeping Richard alive for hundreds of years. They also find a room with mirrors, where they see into the Antarctic station clinic. There, Esther and Trev—whom Nicholas and Collins recognize as a former Library bodyguard—struggle. Pearl shoots Trev, and the women push him through the mirror, mangling his body.

With Pearl’s consent, Esther uses a spell to erase Pearl’s memory of the past 24 hours. Esther promises to come back to her, then leaves Antarctica. Maram tells Collins and Nicholas to escape, and they leave the Library. The three meet on a plane from Auckland to Los Angeles with tickets orchestrated by Maram. Recognizing her from the mirror, Nicholas asks Esther about why the magic didn’t affect her, and realizes that she, like him, is a Scribe. The three arrive at the house in Vermont and are admitted by a reluctant Joanna, who is furious with Esther. The sisters talk and reconcile, and Nicholas inspects the book that killed Abe, realizing that it is a “vampire,” meaning it drains the blood of anyone who attempts to tamper with it. It is the same spell he saw a draft of in Richard’s study: the spell keeping Richard himself alive. Two Scribes are required to destroy it, and Esther and Nicholas attempt to do so, but realize they also need a bone that forms part of the frame of a portrait in Richard’s study. Esther writes a spell to lift Collins’s non-disclosure agreement (NDA), a magical gag order required of employees of the Library.

To Joanna’s horror, Collins—on Maram’s instruction—steals the wards that protect the house. When his NDA is lifted, he tells them about Maram’s plan to protect Nicholas and recalls that she showed him a picture of herself with an infant. Nicholas realizes the baby must be Esther and that Maram is Isabel. Wondering about Maram’s intention in lowering the wards, the group realizes that it would enable the passage of items into the house via the mirror in Esther’s room. A note from Maram comes through the mirror, and Esther interprets it as a coded hint that she and Nicholas can use the mirror to travel to Richard’s study in London to destroy the bone and end his immortality. They travel through the mirror and unexpectedly find Maram with Richard, who is holding a gun.

In Vermont, Cecily arrives at the house when she realizes the wards are down. She explains what she knows about Maram: She was ambitious and always wanted to have a central role with the Library; she fell in love with both Abe and Richard and kept her pregnancy with Esther even though she didn’t want a child; and she learned about a spell Richard used to find Scribes. Maram came to Cecily and Abe with a plan to protect Esther by instructing her to travel annually on the day of the spell’s activation. Cecily also tells Collins and Joanna that Maram is under a silencing spell, then proceeds to deactivate it.

In London, the breaking of the spell enables Maram to speak in code to Esther, referencing the bullets-to-bees spell used in the “assassination attempt” on Nicholas. Esther understands that his gun will not be effective and lunges at Richard. Nicholas and Esther destroy the bone and the book, causing Richard’s death. Maram departs, ensuring that Nicholas has what he needs to take over the Library, but acknowledging that her presence is not necessarily beneficial to either Nicholas or the Library itself. Joanna arrives in London, where Collins invites her to dinner, and Pearl calls Esther, indicating their potential reconciliation. The novel concludes as the group prepares to read a spell to right one of the Library’s wrongs—perpetrated by Richard—and reverse his spell designed to limit magic to bloodlines.