Mark Lawrence is one of the biggest names to emerge in fantasy over the last decade or so, having helped to push the Grimdark movement in Fantasy to new heights with his Broken Earth trilogy and it’s follow-up trilogy, The Red Queen’s War. Since those six books were published, Mark has been keeping a steady schedule of about a book per year, trilogies over the years, which aren’t connected. His newest book/2023 release, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is something of a break from his earlier, darker works. It is also his longest novel to date.
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.
Lawrence focuses his narrative on two characters, Livira and Evar, both of whom have strong connections to an infinite Library known as the Atheneum in the city of Crath. Evar has lived the majority of his life in the Library seeking an escape. Livira is an outsider, having grown up in the village known as the Dust. She has dreams of visiting Crath, escaping her backwater village. When her village is attacked by sabbers she is brought to Crath and finds herself recruited to work in the Library. Although many view Livira as a low-class, unintelligent savage because of where she was born, she quickly proves quite the opposite. She’s extremely sharp witted and intelligent, has a fantastic active mindset, and is really quite fascinating.
The Library is at the center of the story, it can be seen as what is sometimes referred to in Science Fiction as a Big Dumb Object. It is more than that, of course, it is a repository of knowledge, it is a portal through which characters can access knowledge and other worlds. It is comparable to the Dark Tower from Stephen King’s saga or more recently, the tower of Babel from Josiah Bancroft’s Books of Babel. It is beyond full comprehension of the characters who live in and around it, it is an object of wonder. I was also reminded of the library the Ninth Doctor (David Tennant) visited in “Silence in the Library” with the quote, “We’re in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world. This room’s the greatest arsenal we could have. Arm yourself!” There’s a blurred line between Fantasy and Science Fiction elements in the story, something that has been a hallmark of Lawrence’s previous novels I’ve read, and an element I enjoyed him revisiting in The Book That Wouldn’t Burn. In short, Lawrence’s Library/Atheneum is a wondrous fantastical creation.
It is clear Lawrence has a grand vision for this world and these characters, I just don’t know if I’ll be following that journey.
Unfortunately, for the great character of Livira and the fascinating Library, I wasn’t able to fully enjoy the novel. Lawrence spins some entrancing prose through most of the novel, but for my reading sensibilities, the plot wandered quite a bit. The pacing was rather slow-going and at times repetitive, I felt the weight of the 500+ pages of the narrative. The mythology around Evar and his “siblings” was quite loosely formed to the point that my appreciation for Evar’s character and plight waned significantly the more I read of the book. The story came across to me as rather convoluted towards the back third of the novel. There were a couple of logic leaps that hinged on key plot devices only revealed later in the book that didn’t work for me, either.
As I was trudging through the novel, I decided to check the thoughts/reviews of some trusted online reviewers as well as take a look at goodreads. I must have been reading a different book, because The Book that Didn’t Burn just didn’t work for me. More likely, I’m just a different person. I’m glad so many people have enjoyed Mark Lawrence’s latest epic, I just wasn’t one of them. I’ll still have his Red Queen’s War trilogy, which is one of my favorites from the past decade.
© 2023 Rob H. Bedford
Hardcover | 576 pages
May 2023 | Published by Ace
https://www.marklawrence.buzz/
Review copy courtesy of the publisher
