Synopsis:

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:

Sometimes you pick up a book that just sticks with you. Not because you can see yourself exactly in a character or that you relate to the subject matter very deeply, but because you find yourself thinking about the book when you’re not reading it. There is nothing else you want to do but find out what happens next, to see what discovery or realisation the characters are going to make. This book was that for me.

The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is told from the perspectives of two characters. There is Livira, a girl from the Dust whose life is turned upside-down when her village is attacked by sabbers, and she finds herself in the city of Craith. We also have Evar, a young man who has grown up trapped in a library with only his adopted siblings and a pair of android-figures for company and protection from the shadows that manifest.

The primary setting for the story is a library – The Athenaeum, and it is a seemingly endless library at that. It’s a fascinating labyrinth that holds the collective history of mankind, and not even the oldest librarian will ever know all of its secrets. The world building around and outside of the library is complex and rich, but not confusing. Alongside ‘knowledge is power’, discrimination and xenophobia are some of the big topics explored through the book and the way these themes are woven into the story is just masterful.

The plot took its time to build and the overall pacing was by no means fast. However the level of intrigue and the thrilling reveals through the story had me turning pages at lighting speed. I had several moments where I had to pause and just take in what I’d read before I could continue. The way the lives of the two characters connected was just fantastic, and the ending was satisfying while still leaving me excited for what is to come next.
This was my first Mark Lawrence book, and it most definitely will not be my last!

Thank you to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for an arc of this book. I have left this review voluntarily.