The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence (Reviewed by Shazzie)

 Book Review: The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence

Official Author Website 

Buy The Book That Wouldn't Burn here - U.S | U.K | International

OFFICIAL AUTHOR BIO: Mark Lawrence is married with four children, one of whom is severely disabled. His day job is as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. At one point he was qualified to say 'this isn't rocket science … oh wait, it actually is'.

Between work and caring for his disabled child, Mark spends his time writing, playing computer games, tending an allotment, brewing beer, and avoiding DIY.

OFFICIAL BOOK BLURB: A boy has lived his whole life trapped within a vast library, older than empires and larger than cities.

A girl has spent hers in a tiny settlement out on the Dust where nightmares stalk and no one goes.

The world has never even noticed them. That's about to change.

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..

FORMAT/INFO: The Book That Wouldn't Burn is the first book in the Library Trilogy. It will be published in hardback, audio and ebook, in May 2023 by Harper Collins in the U.K. and by Ace Books in the U.S. 

OVERVIEW/ANALYSIS: This was one of my most anticipated releases this year. It features a library, and no matter who the author or what the content, I will pick up a book that does that. 

This is the first entry in an epic fantasy series, and is set in the city of Crath. It revolves around the points of view of two characters, Livira and Evar, both of different backgrounds and situations. Livira is a girl who lives in the dust, who has a dream to go see the big city that she has heard so much about. In a careful-what-you-wish-for turn of events, she gets to go to the city as a band of sabbers attacks her settlement, and ends up in the proximity of this library. Evar, however, is born in the library, and imprisoned in it for generations, despite all his attempts at escape, and has only his siblings and The Assistant and The Soldier, whose purpose is to look after the library, and are the closest he has ever had to family.

Livira is shown to be a brave, smart, sharp girl who is curious, and can never be kept away from asking questions. While the book spans a large number of years of her life, this is the one trait that she never shakes off, and one that is vital to the progression of the story too. Evar, on the other hand, is determined to escape the library and find someone he doesn't remember too much of, but is desperate to get to. The first few chapters of the book made me extremely curious about the nature of the library, as well as the fate of all the people of Evar's kind. Despite their different backgrounds, they have one thing in common: their loneliness. While Evar constantly feels like he's less than his siblings and wants to find the woman of his dreams, Livira seeks a lot of the knowledge she can get from the tomes in the library, as well as unravel the general mystery of the place. I admit I connected more with Livira, and really enjoyed reading about her learning in this process. Every little thing she had to do with the library made me impatient, and kept me going until about halfway, which is when I got invested in the overall story.

The worldbuilding and the characters here go hand in hand, because the readers learn about it all through their experiences. Livira starts off as a blank slate who knows nothing about the origin of the city, or the library. Over the course of the book, she trains to be a librarian and her education is used brilliantly to introduce us to vastness of the library, which is meant to have a collection of every record that has ever existed. If you think you have trouble organising your ever-growing bookshelves, you'll relate to a lot of this setting. Mark Lawrence takes that idea, multiplies it by leaps and bounds, to give us something truly unimaginable. The library feels like a world of its own. This is not the only part of the setting readers will love, there is tons of narrative that comments on many things that frequently come up in the book community. You'll also find a lot of nods to prominent works /authors in here as well. There's a lot of other commentary as well, and there is a certain character who somewhat also serves as a mentor figure who raises philosophical questions, as well as point toward social issues and address the ideas of racism,  maintaining control through affirmation, the nature of civilisation, and many more.

I don't want to say too much about the plot because this is a book best experienced by reading. But I will say this: I liked the mystery promised in the first part of the book, and liked the way the history of the city and the civilisation in question were explored over the second half. There are some familiar tropes done in a refreshing manner, and they serve the story well. The pacing did suffer a bit in the middle, where it is a lot slower, and without Livia's exploration of the library or the wide cast of characters that surround our protagonists, I'm not sure I'd have gotten through it. The author's prose definitely does not fit my personal preferences, but I see why it works for a lot of readers. I like it simple, and there are many parts of the book where the narration relies of the usage of metaphors, and here, of course, your mileage will vary.

CONCLUSION: The Book That Wouldn't Burn is clearly a book put together with care and deliberation. While the prose was a bit much for my personal taste, there is a lot here to be enjoyed. It feels like a love letter to various aspects of life as a reader, and lays the groundwork for the story of a civilisation in a very compelling manner.