This Golden Flame

For centuries the automatons have stood still, dormant waiting for someone to awaken them. But the secret to waking them disappeared when their heart was destroyed. All Karis wants is to escape from the Scriptorium and find her brother. Her chance comes when she finds Alix, an automaton unlike any other. This one is very much alive and very much human. Together they cross the sea, meet pirates and join a rebellion, all while finding out what family really is.

The cast of characters isn’t large, but there are more than a few to remember, each different in their own ways. The villain is a bit two dimensional, and he doesn’t appear till the last quarter of the book. The magic system is different, they write runes in a ledger that, depending on what it means and how it’s written, can do many things.