Mark Lawrence

The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Laura Dobie

 'Are we in your book, or am I in my memory of it? Have you even written this part yet? Are you even you, or just the story you're telling about yourself? We're all the story we tell about ourselves, silly.' Another wave rocked them. That's all anyone ever is -the story they tell, and the stories told about them. Fiction captures more than facts do. That’s why the library keeps it. It’s the most important part of our memories.’

This beautifully captures what gives life joy, meaning and purpose 

Starval tapped the hilt of his dagger, twisting his lips. ‘People die, brother. That's what I've learned. Life's cheap, easily spent. And if there's any joy to be had it's in the moments between. So, when you find something that makes you happy you take it with both hands, and you hold on to it for as long as you can. It's not going to last. It will be taken from you. But that's not the point. The point is that you took your chance, you drank the wine, you took what good you could from the world, and you gave it yours.’

Bethany

“We can never go back. Time doesn’t work that way. Not once you've stepped into the current…One of the earliest philosophers told us you can't step into the same river twice. The library taught me you can't read the same book twice either—you're the river." 

The knowledge that he couldn't possibly read all the books on offer put a peculiar pressure on choosing his next read. There must be diamonds out there, the best book in a thousand, the best book in a million, and surely he didn't want to waste his time reading one that was merely adequate when he could be reading one of those diamonds? So instead, he often wasted his time hunting for a read instead of reading.

This beautifully evokes how a scent provides a framework for memory and can take you back to a particular place and time.

Scent is a peg on which memories are hung. 

Clovis barked a harsh laugh. "Quitting the battlefield can sometimes be a step towards winning the war. But here, for us, the Mechanism is the war! What else is there for us except to grow old and die among these rotting books?"

Like all hunters, sorrow advances on slow, silent feet, until the last moment when it attacks from cover, springing with such speed that the impact rocks the victim on their heels.

'And we librarians are not unlike miners, given that we spend so much of our time digging and burrowing in the depths, hunting valuable nuggets.’

Mark  Lawrence

The greatest story can reach the stars...
Evar has lives his whole life trapped within a vast library, older than empires and larger than cities. 
Livira has spent hers in a tiny settlement out on the Dust where nightmares stalk and no one goes.
The world has never noticed them.
That's about to change.

As their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time, each will unlock vast secrets about the world and themselves. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another.

Book one of the Library Trilogy

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn

Victoria Justice

"That's all anyone ever is - the story they tell, and the stories told about them. Fiction captures more than facts do."

"It's always the books you don't have that call to you, you know that. Not the ones already on your shelf. They can wait."

Life's cheap, easily spent. And if there's any joy to be hand its in the moments between. So, when you find something that makes you happy you take it with both hands, and you hold on to it for as long as you can.

"Hurt's don't stop, but they fade into shadows of what they were. That's sad. That something so vital, something that bit you so deep, can be eroded by time into a story that almost seems like it happened to someone else. Any hurt. The years have taken away her meaning. It lessons us."

Secrets always seemed to escape if given space. One person could hold a secret tight ti their chest with both hands. When it was two, or three, or four people it was as if that secret had to be tossed back and forth between them, creating many chances to drop it.

Any book worth its ink must, she thought, have something I'd thebauthor held between the lines. There were, she believed, enough parts if enough people on the library's shelves to repopulate a world many times over, if only they could be correctly assembled.

Her memory was essentially infallible as as facts were concerned, but emotion had a tendency ti dry like ink and cease ti glisten. It needed to be captured as close to the moment as possible.

There are moments in life when you know with a great and unshakeable certainty that everything will change.

Kindness carries a weight; it's a burden all its own when you have nothing. Some undeniable part of Livira wanted to bite the hands that offered so much so freely. Pride is stupid, pride is blind, but pride is also the backbone that runs through us: without pride there's no spring-back, no resilience.

Well-written immersive fantasy, with a library setting and sweeping scope and reach. There’s so much in here on love, loss, how we perceive others, conflict, learning, knowledge, writing, literature, stories, history and time travel.

In my mind, Livira as a character inherits from Lyra (His Dark Materials) and Liesel (The Book Thief) and I'll admit that might be part of why Mark Lawrence's The Book That Wouldn't Burn really engaged me from the start. Another reason - and the one that made this book jump on my TBR (overcoming other Mark Lawrence books I have listed) - is the fact that I am a sucker for books about books or reading.

Those points made and eventual biases admitted, what actually is this book? We follow two separate stories, one of Levira - which gives the world most of its structure and the reader a proper theme and center to focus on - and the other of Evar - who provides a more mysterious and thrilling plot that we know will eventually make sense in conjunction with the first. Livira is a child, born on a deserted landscape referred to as the dust, orphaned, and known to be inquisitive and stubborn. Evar is a young adult male living with his "siblings" in a closed chamber of the Library.

The Library is the third character and, for me, at once the most interesting and mysterious and also the most developed. Through the people we follow, the Library itself, its myths, its history, its rules and purpose, its meaning are hinted at, revealed and questioned.

The Library and time itself serve the author well, allowing Lawrence to explore the nature of knowledge, perspective, belief, showing how truth and bias can blend, how purpose and result can clash, how no one has devised a way to live in united peace and progress.

If you read speculative fiction and want a story that sets up such themes, that will have you think on the value of knowledge, its supposed neutrality or benefit, its control, its inherent bias or that of the ones with such access, the different ways it can influence individuals, peoples, ages, the way it travels through time and space, the way it molds people's beliefs, the way it can separate as much as bring together, the way it can empower as much as it can lead to disaster, this is a book for you.

This is not a perfect book, the writing is really good and some details had me mentally cheering Mark Lawrence, but it is a bit slow and meandering at certain points and some characters deserved more visible depth. I gave it 4.5 stars here (for whatever star ratings are worth) because it was a great read for me, I loved Livira and the Library and all they made me ponder. The relevance of these themes for human civilizations, personal lives and choices is always clear, but maybe even more so during such times we are living through.

André Nóbrega

In my mind, Livira as a character inherits from Lyra (His Dark Materials) and Liesel (The Book Thief) and I'll admit that might be part of why Mark Lawrence's The Book That Wouldn't Burn really engaged me from the start. Another reason - and the one that made this book jump on my TBR (overcoming other Mark Lawrence books I have listed) - is the fact that I am a sucker for books about books or reading.

Those points made and eventual biases admitted, what actually is this book? We follow two separate stories, one of Levira - which gives the world most of its structure and the reader a proper theme and center to focus on - and the other of Evar - who provides a more mysterious and thrilling plot that we know will eventually make sense in conjunction with the first. Livira is a child, born on a deserted landscape referred to as the dust, orphaned, and known to be inquisitive and stubborn. Evar is a young adult male living with his "siblings" in a closed chamber of the Library.

The Library is the third character and, for me, at once the most interesting and mysterious and also the most developed. Through the people we follow, the Library itself, its myths, its history, its rules and purpose, its meaning are hinted at, revealed and questioned.

The Library and time itself serve the author well, allowing Lawrence to explore the nature of knowledge, perspective, belief, showing how truth and bias can blend, how purpose and result can clash, how no one has devised a way to live in united peace and progress.

If you read speculative fiction and want a story that sets up such themes, that will have you think on the value of knowledge, its supposed neutrality or benefit, its control, its inherent bias or that of the ones with such access, the different ways it can influence individuals, peoples, ages, the way it travels through time and space, the way it molds people's beliefs, the way it can separate as much as bring together, the way it can empower as much as it can lead to disaster, this is a book for you.

This is not a perfect book, the writing is really good and some details had me mentally cheering Mark Lawrence, but it is a bit slow and meandering at certain points and some characters deserved more visible depth. I gave it 4.5 stars here (for whatever star ratings are worth) because it was a great read for me, I loved Livira and the Library and all they made me ponder. The relevance of these themes for human civilizations, personal lives and choices is always clear, but maybe even more so during such times we are living through.

I really liked the idea of this. The world felt complex and layered and like it existed beyond the pages of the novel, beyond the themes and particular challenges the characters faced or with which they dealt. The writing also flowed wonderfully.

There are some cliches in there but I feel like the work around them makes up for it. There is also some excellent work with laying the ground of the twists and reveals, giving the readers enough clues to guess what is coming up, without making the P.O.V. characters seem stupid for missing the obvious. The narration also utilises the plot points well to ensure that they work with the themes, rather than as empty beats to be hit; it manages to tackle questions of power and how that ties in with knowledge, of what makes a villain, of what separates us and what brings us to understand each other.

All of this is to say that I appreciate both the ambition and the intricacy that Lawrence introduces to his plot and to the structure of his novel. However, I feel like the novel also ended up suffering for it, in terms of pacing. Sometimes, the novel would halt to either overexplain or to indulge in the fact that it is about books and creation and literature. I would often find myself becoming invested in the story, only for it to take one of those detours and destroy almost all desire to pick it back up. I am not sure whether the format contributed to those sections really sticking out to me but it is also a common problem with established fantasy authors nowadays so I would not entirely rely on that.

Regardless, the issue was significant enough for me to have to lower the rating.

Also, I found the romance weird and inconvincing. [SPOILER]It is just strange for Evar to meet Livira when she is so young but then develop romantic feelings for her, with the help of time travel. Likewise, a little strange to later realise she has been his mother figure all along, too. [END SPOILER] I have found that male fantasy authors tend to shoehorn romance a lot more than female authors (romantasy not included, of course), and always in ways that make me feel like it is taking away from the actual focus of the novel.

Great concept, overly long execution.

I really liked the idea of this. The world felt complex and layered and like it existed beyond the pages of the novel, beyond the themes and particular challenges the characters faced or with which they dealt. The writing also flowed wonderfully.

There are some cliches in there but I feel like the work around them makes up for it. There is also some excellent work with laying the ground of the twists and reveals, giving the readers enough clues to guess what is coming up, without making the P.O.V. characters seem stupid for missing the obvious. The narration also utilises the plot points well to ensure that they work with the themes, rather than as empty beats to be hit; it manages to tackle questions of power and how that ties in with knowledge, of what makes a villain, of what separates us and what brings us to understand each other.

All of this is to say that I appreciate both the ambition and the intricacy that Lawrence introduces to his plot and to the structure of his novel. However, I feel like the novel also ended up suffering for it, in terms of pacing. Sometimes, the novel would halt to either overexplain or to indulge in the fact that it is about books and creation and literature. I would often find myself becoming invested in the story, only for it to take one of those detours and destroy almost all desire to pick it back up. I am not sure whether the format contributed to those sections really sticking out to me but it is also a common problem with established fantasy authors nowadays so I would not entirely rely on that.

Regardless, the issue was significant enough for me to have to lower the rating.

Also, I found the romance weird and inconvincing. [SPOILER]It is just strange for Evar to meet Livira when she is so young but then develop romantic feelings for her, with the help of time travel. Likewise, a little strange to later realise she has been his mother figure all along, too. [END SPOILER] I have found that male fantasy authors tend to shoehorn romance a lot more than female authors (romantasy not included, of course), and always in ways that make me feel like it is taking away from the actual focus of the novel.

Alba Ramos

ive been complaining about the book since the first sentence but still finished it so props? only gave it 2 stars cause the last quarter or so was nice

Frida Kahlo

The Book That Wouldn't Burn is the first book in a new sci-fi/fantasy trilogy by Mark Lawrence, and it is amazing! It is also my first read by this author, and I'm definitely intrigued to read more by him.

It's a dual POV story following Evar, who has lived his entire life stuck within the confines of a huge library, and Livira, who lived out in a tiny settlement within the Dust. Both of their lives are about to be irrevocably altered.

It's a book that causes you to question things, forces you to change your beliefs, and alters all your perspectives. Its an ode to stories and how they provide the power of escape, can influence our dreams and teach us the impossible to understand. It's a book that needs to be experienced to appreciate why words fail me.

If you love a book about books, with libraries vast enough to get lost within, protectors of books and the power contained within a story, then this is definitely the book for you.

But maybe wait for the sequel because that ending is brutal, and I need the next book immediately!

The Book That Wouldn't Burn is the first book in a new sci-fi/fantasy trilogy by Mark Lawrence, and it is amazing! It is also my first read by this author, and I'm definitely intrigued to read more by him.

It's a dual POV story following Evar, who has lived his entire life stuck within the confines of a huge library, and Livira, who lived out in a tiny settlement within the Dust. Both of their lives are about to be irrevocably altered.

It's a book that causes you to question things, forces you to change your beliefs, and alters all your perspectives. Its an ode to stories and how they provide the power of escape, can influence our dreams and teach us the impossible to understand. It's a book that needs to be experienced to appreciate why words fail me.

If you love a book about books, with libraries vast enough to get lost within, protectors of books and the power contained within a story, then this is definitely the book for you.

But maybe wait for the sequel because that ending is brutal, and I need the next book immediately!

marie

Aditi Dankar

Bianca

Two strangers find themselves connected by a vast and mysterious library containing many wonders and still more secrets, in this powerfully moving first book in a new series from the international bestselling author of Red Sister and Prince of Thorns.

The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a book-choked chamber older than empires and larger than cities.

The girl has been plucked from the outskirts of civilization to be trained as a librarian, studying the mysteries of the great library at the heart of her kingdom.

They were never supposed to meet. But in the library, they did.

Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another. A journey on which knowledge erodes certainty and on which, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, blood will be spilled and cities burned.

The Book That Wouldn't Burn

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