“All men can love a forbidden thing, generally speaking, and in most cases knowledge is precisely that; lost knowledge even more so.”

This quote sums up—and foreshadows—the characters’ main motivation in trying to gain access to the Alexandrian Society. Whether it is the protagonists seeking initiation into the Society, Atlas’s desire to destroy it, or even the Forum’s aim to make its archives freely accessible, all parties are driven by their desire and ambition to gain the knowledge it contains.

“Alone, he might have done exceptional magic, but would have fallen shy of the extraordinary. Inevitably he would have succumbed to mundanity, to struggle, to boredom, as all humans eventually did—but now, because of this, he wouldn’t. The pittances of a small existence would count among the many things he would never again risk since he took his seat in this room ten years prior.”

Dalton reflects on what his life might have looked like had he not accepted the Society’s invitation. He points out the invaluable opportunity that being initiated granted him and suggests that he is ready to fight for the life he has gained. This passage sets up the new candidates’ ambition to achieve greatness and the sacrifices they will need to make.

“Dalton looked out at their faces and imagined again the life he might have lived; the lives they all might have lived, had they never been offered such…riches. Eternal glory. Unparalleled wisdom. Here they would unlock the secrets the world had kept from itself for centuries, for millennia. Things that no ordinary eyes would ever see, and that no lesser minds could possibly understand. Here, at the library, their lives would change. Here their former selves would be destroyed, like the library itself, only to be built back up again and hidden in the shadows, never to be seen except by the Caretakers, by the Alexandrians, and by the ghosts of lives uncrossed and paths untaken.”

Dalton is giving the new candidates an orientation speech about the Alexandrian Society and reflects on the opportunities that have been afforded to him since he found himself in their place. His reminiscence creates intrigue and suspense for the reader and foreshadows some of the obstacles the protagonists will face, echoing Tristan’s later moral dilemma: “Perhaps they were being disintegrated on purpose, morality removed so they could be stitched back up with less-human parts” (269).