This is a late start for me this year—I have had a very busy couple of months. Hopefully things smooth out a bit!
Lucky me, Mark Lawrence knocks it out of the park again. The man can write some serious engaging blends of fantasy and science fiction. With The Book That Wouldn’t Burn—the first book of his new trilogy—we have a love letter to stories, libraries and nostalgia.
Unlike a number of his previous trilogies (yes, the man is a prolific writer) The Book That Wouldn’t Burn is meant to have no connection with his previous sprawling mythos—at least so far! And the centrepiece of the new setting is a gigantic, worlds-sprawling library, which is sure to delight the bibliophiles. This library, the Athenaeum, is so old that it is not certain whether it or the surrounding city came first. And like any good ancient setting, it has a history steeped in myth:
It was Jaspeth’s and Irad’s grandfather who invented fratricide, and at an early age the brothers resolved to use other means to settle their differences. When Irad raised the first library, a temple to the sin of knowledge, a stone house in which his great-grandmother’s original crime could shelter, Jaspeth resolved to tear it down. In previous generations, a death would have followed. Instead, they found an uneasy compromise and the echoes of their bickering have rattled down eternity’s corridors.
Now Jaspeth seems a little out of place here, but Irad is the grandson of Cain; which is an early indication that the world we are in is similar, but not quite the same as our own. It also establishes (relatively) early on that the library is both a place of knowledge and a place of ongoing conflict— that dates nearly as far back as the apple.
Now, I usually wouldn’t start a book review by describing the setting over the characters involved. But since I finished the book, I could argue the library in itself could be seen as a character of its own. And because this new trilogy is not supposably linked to the great mythos Lawrence has previously set up, I’ve sort of become hyper-curious to this new background.
Will it become relevant? I can’t imagine that it won’t be!
Thankfully, the story in the foreground is just as interesting as the threads woven into the background. In The Book That Wouldn’t Burn we follow two protagonists, Livira and Evar. Lawrence has shown in the past that he can handle young female protagonists well and Livira is no exception; after her home in The Dust is attacked by a pack of wolf-men known as Scabbers, Livira and the survivors are brought to Crath City. While she’s looked down upon as a refugee and a ‘Duster’, Livira is wickedly smart. She also seems to possess knowledge of a language she really should not, and this gets the attention of one of the librarians, Yute.
Evar is also strongly linked to libraries; he was raised in one, along with several Foundling siblings and two robotic constructs. Within Evar’s library is the Mechanism, which allows anyone who enters it to experience a book in an immersive fashion. It was through this Mechanism that Evar and four other children entered the library. Unlike his siblings, Evar has no memory of his previous life and no idea how to handle his life ahead. Until one day he comes across a small black book and discovers, like Livira, that he too can read a language that he should not be able to.
“Evar! Don’t turn the page! I’m in the Exchange. Find me at the bottom”
Imagine that: finding a mysterious book in a mysterious language, and then being told you’re not allowed to read any further!
I don’t want to give away any more of the plot than I just have; I feel that would take away from the experience of reading the book. What I will say is although Lawrence says that this is a new world that he’s exploring and it’s not linked narratively to his other books, I would say that there are common tropes and themes that he’s used in his other works that are going to pop up here. This is not an unwelcome thing, by the way. Also if you’re looking for the general ‘feel’ of the book going forward, the earlier parts give a mixture of CS Lewis and Philip Pullman, but the later parts of the book start to take on a more Murakami kind of vibe.
And while I think the threads have been woven together to a satisfying whole I did get the impression by reading the latter half of the book that Mark Lawrence might be one of those writers— like George RR Martin—who flies by the seat of his pants. Because I cannot imagine that he meticulously plotted that all out right from the start?
I would be curious to know what his actual writing method is.
Despite its door-stopper size, I found The Book That Wouldn’t Burn to be quite refreshing. And if you’re a fan of his other works it’s worthy of checking out.
(I’ll confess that I still haven’t gotten around to re-trying The Broken Empire trilogy… maybe one day)