The Book That Wouldn't Burn - Mark Lawrence
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Fantasy
Rating: 8.5/10
Two strangers find themselves connected by a vast and mysterious library. One that encompasses wonders beyond their wildest imaging’s, crammed with a labyrinth of secrets and forbidden chambers.
The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a chamber of the library, one teeming with books and steeped in history. He and those with him are able to vanish inside a book, having it fully animate in their mind. Where the world within the chosen book comes alive and they can live within it, experiencing it in all ways. Those intended by the author, and otherwise.
The girl has spent hers in a settlement out on the Dust, a barren world where nightmares stalk you even in the daylight. She never expects to find herself in a strange city, on the path to becoming a librarian of all things.
This ambitious and meticulously crafted book is a celebration of stories that outlive the paper they are written on and the libraries where they rest on shelves to be read. Unquestionably a love letter to books and the buildings that house them, this has a far greater reach to be explored for the reader. Beautifully woven with magic, adventure, intrigue and even love.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to any of you regular followers that I adored this read about libraries and stories and books. And that I found many passages that stayed with me, my favourite of which is the following…
“All of us steal our lives. A little here, a little there. Some of it given, most of it taken. We wear ourselves like a coat of many patches, fraying at the edges. While we shore up one belief, we let go another. We are the stories we are told and tell ourselves. Nothing more.”
Footnote: I found myself pondering which book I would choose to live inside…after much consideration I picked Fairy Tale by Stephen King. What can I say, better a little scary than a lot boring!
Book Pairing(s): Ten Thousand Doors Of January by Alix E. Harrow, Wicked Saints by Emily A Duncan, Fairy Tale by Stephen King
