I’ll always pick up a book about a library or bookstore. The Book that Wouldn’t Burn, by Mark Lawrence, is just such a book. The library is a character in itself, mysterious, magical, dangerous, not just for the information in it, but for what lies in its chambers, and the knowledge of all the races it encompasses. Livira was born with a name but gained the name of a persistent weed of her arid homeland, because she’s just like it. She’s tenacious, stubborn, with a mind like both a sponge and a steel trap. Evar has only ever lived in one chamber of the library, like his found family of brothers and one sister. They were all put into a mechanism in the center of the library long ago, one each with a book, and came out long afterwards, with all the skills and even the mindset of the book and author. Except for Evar. He came out feeling as if someone was missing or had been taken from him.
We meet Livira at her home in the Dust, at age 8, when a canine race overruns the small settlement and takes the children captive. They are saved by a command of soldiers from a nearby city, and marched to the city, to be put to work there. Livira, as is her way, decides to take matters into her own hands, and ends up working in the Library. In a distant future, Evar is first found attempting to reach the ceiling of the chamber of the Library he & his siblings have never been able to leave, except through the Exchange, the mechanism that brought them together through time. He’s in his early 20s. So of course, we see more growth in the character of Livira, as she grows older, working in the library. There is more to Evar—he’s the only one of the siblings with a last name—Evantari.
Nowhere in the Library is safe—in either Livira’s time, or Evar’s. Mechanisms both helpful, neutral, and dangerous, wander the chambers that Livira’s time can access. In Evar’s time, his family is protected by two such mechanisms, against monsters called Escapes.
At the beginning if feels like a fantasy, or an end of empire or failing colony story. The further into the book I read, the more interesting the themes became. I hadn’t been acquainted with the author, but after reading reviews, discovered he was going to do something different (paraphrase from Grimdark Magazine, review by John Mauro), and even in the blended fantasy science fiction genre, it is different. It does speak to many timeless themes—should knowledge be free to the masses, should advanced technology be accessible to less advanced societies. Even the state of refugees in times of crisis. It hints at mechanisms that span time and place, machines far above the current society’s technical level. Even sayings like “we’re not in Kansas anymore” appear, even though they have no idea what or where Kansas is or was. The Library, sometimes called the Athenaeum, has always been there. It has rooms that only open to the species that it has books from. So far, three species are known. My suspicion is that none is native to the planet, which is never named.
I enjoyed The Book that Wouldn’t Burn so much that I read the next title in the trilogy, The Book that Broke the World, and am waiting for The Book that Held Her Heart, out in April 2025.
The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, by Mark Lawrence, book 1 in The Library Trilogy, Ace (Penguin Random House), 2023, hardback, 9780593437919, 559 pages,
The Book That Broke the World, by Mark Lawrence, book 2 in The Library Trilogy, Ace (Penguin Random House), 2024, hardback
