Sanet Oberholzer reviews ‘The Book that Wouldn’t Burn’ by Mark Lawrence

‘The Book that Wouldn’t Burn’

Mark Lawrence, Harper Voyager

With The Book that Wouldn’t Burn, Mark Lawrence took a bit of sci-fi and a whole lot of fantasy to produce a book that reads like a love letter to libraries — and ultimately the books that make them the beguiling places they are.

The book starts in the Dust — a dry and barren stretch of aptly named land. Believed once to have been an ancient lakebed, it’s a place with one well that holds just enough water to feed a crop of beans that keeps alive the inhabitants who call this desert home. However, for Livira it’s the place that feeds her desire to escape.

Our young protagonist’s luck soon turns, though, in one of the most heart-wrenching ways. When sabbers — raiding enemies of superior strength with ferocity running through their veins — attack her settlement, they carry the children off as captives and leave the rest of the people for dead.

By a further twist of fate, the children are intercepted by an army from a city far away that Livira has always dreamed of visiting. She soon finds herself headed for a life in Crath City’s library — a living, mystical place filled with vast, seemingly endless chambers that rearrange themselves every few decades and are home to mechanical assistants science cannot account for. These helpers have provided the answers for humanity’s evolution and reinvention every time society has inevitably imploded through warfare and weapons.

In another library, we meet Evar, a boy who has spent his whole life trapped. He, his two brothers and his sister are watched over by an assistant and a soldier, two of the beings serving this particular library. His siblings are gifted with a very peculiar set of skills owing to lost years spent in the Mechanism, but Evar’s mind is blank. He remembers nothing of those lost years and can think of nothing but finding answers beyond the walls that surround him.

As you delve into the world Evar is trying desperately to escape, you simultaneously learn more about the world Livira has come to embrace. But are the two destined to meet? The more you read, the more you discover it’s a curious place, this world of seemingly connected libraries, and it seems two characters’ fates were written as intertwined a long, long time ago.

This is the first book in Lawrence’s Library Trilogy. With book series such as The Broken Empire, The Red Queen’s War and The Book of the Ice under his belt, Lawrence is a true master of words, and the superior quality of his prose is evident from the start. He interweaves profoundly crafted emotion with bits of colour and plenty of imaginative — and certainly impressive — world-building.

The book starts slowly, and some tenacity is needed as you work your way towards an ending even the most ardent fantasy lover would not be able to predict. Lawrence takes his time to set the scene, and his character development is slow, well thought-out and rich. He gives you time to get to know Livira as she grows up, leaving years between the various scenes. In so doing, he allows you to discover a loveable character.

I became obsessed with this book, and by the time I had finished reading it, I was desperate to make a start on the second in the series. And that is possibly one of the highest forms of praise a novel can receive.