Title: The Book That Wouldn’t Burn
Author: Mark Lawrence
Publisher: Ace (US) HarperVoyager (UK)
Genre: Fantasy
Format: Hardcover / Paperback / Audiobook / Ebook
Release Date: May 9, 2023 (US) May 11, 2023 (UK)
Star Rating: 9/10
Summary
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.
Review
The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence features wonderful quotes all the way through.
There’s so many gorgeous pieces, I have a whole document saved to choose from, just for this review.
Aside from this full-on banquet of prose, the story itself is as manifold as the pages in a library.
“But there was something about the number of choices that paralysed him. Rather like when it came to choosing a new book from the stacks. 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.”
It can be read as a fantastic story about books and the love for words.
It can be read as a story about an outsider finding her way against the odds.
It can be read as a story about there being at least two sides to every story.
It can be read as a love story, even though I’d never call it a romance in the least.
It can also be read as a story about not giving up, no matter what comes your way.
All this, and so much more. There are so many layers, and a story that first seems to be pretty much a straightforward coming of age fantasy suddenly takes you in all sorts of different directions. Before you know it, you’re completely lost in the story, which can be read on the surface level, or can be quite profound and thought provoking if you just dive a little deeper. For me this worked amazingly well, and while it was an easy, captivating and luscious read on the one hand, it’s also one that will stick with me for the ages.
“I’ve lost friends, fast and slow. Every time it was slow, we all wished it was fast, me and them.”
I also liked how it has quite some dark bits, and there’s an ever-escalating war, but the books still felt more of a hopeful, comfortable read in a way? I have no idea how this works, but it did. And I adore it for that! I do like my super grim stories, but I also appreciate some cosy fantasy. This somehow managed to satisfy me on both ends. Magic, I tell you!
“He said a story is a net. It can capture something as large as the spirit of the age or as small as the emotion of a man watching the last leaf fall from a tree, or sometimes both, and make one a reflection of the other.”
