The Book That Wouldn't Burn

April 1, 2023

In this spellbinding fantasy series launch about books that have the power to change the world, Lawrence (The Girl and the Moon) creates a fabulous library, one that is home to a vast, ancient, and sprawling mystery that is a delight to explore. The story focuses on two main characters, Livira and Evar; the former wants to explore the library's reaches, while the latter is looking to escape the library's confines. The novel alternates between Livira and Evar's perspectives, allowing each the chance to push the boundaries of their understanding of the library and the great machine at its heart. It soon becomes clear that nothing is quite as it seems in the library, despite the elaborate machinations of the various librarians and their individual attempts to organize the great, almost alien, collection of material that periodically allows civilizations to rise and fall outside its bounds. VERDICT There is a lot to enjoy here, with a fantastic setting, a feisty heroine, and hints of a deeper mystery that calls to mind the depths of Frank Herbert's Dune and its intertwined cultural and religious issues.--Jeremiah Rood

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 13, 2023
Lawrence (the Broken Empire trilogy) draws readers into a vast subterranean library in this thrilling romantic fantasy and Library Trilogy series launch. After monstrous sabbers attack Livira Page’s village in the backwater known as the Dust, she finds refuge in the big city, where she adjusts quickly despite prejudice against “dusters.” Meanwhile, Evar Eventari and his four siblings live in the mysterious library that stretches beneath the city. It’s the only home they’ve ever known and they share it with a mysterious Mechanism that transforms books into “something to be physically experienced, walked through, partaken in, interrogated, shared.” The quintet spent decades trapped inside the Mechanism before being spit back out again, though they did not age a day in all that time. Each of the siblings gained skills and knowledge from the books they brought into the Mechanism except for Evar, who emerged only with the vague knowledge that he is missing something—or someone—and now he needs to find her. Told over the course of years for Livira and mere days for Evar, this tale of knowledge and its cost flies by thanks to the gripping mystery and beautiful worldbuilding, ending on a devastating cliffhanger. Readers will be desperate for more. Agent: Ian Drury, Sheil Land Assoc.

May 1, 2023
After a series of painful events, young Livira leaves the Dust for the first time and becomes an apprentice in the Library, an endless, mysterious place filled with books from civilizations past and present. In another Library, Evar and his four siblings can never leave. Evar and his siblings are each from a different time, having been sucked into the Library and only spit out much later. Evar has no memory of his life before the Library, only an empty longing for someone he cannot remember. When Evar finds a small book, his life changes and his and Livira's worlds collide. Mixing romance with dystopia and ruminations on knowledge, storytelling, and memory, Lawrence (The Girl and the Moon, 2022) offers a fantasy filled with detailed world building and earned twists. Some pacing issues, groan-worthy puns (a raven named Edgarallen), and the weight of being first in a trilogy may keep this from wider readership, but Lawrence's readers and all fans of epic fantasy, especially bibliofantasy, will enjoy this start of the Library Trilogy.

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Starred review from April 1, 2023
An aspiring librarian and a young man trapped in her library attempt to unravel its mysteries in this tightly paced fantasy. Livira came to Crath City as a refugee after sabbers--wolf-men who prey on humans--destroyed the tiny desert village she called home. In a stroke of good fortune, the city's internal bureaucracy sends her to train at its vast library. Lawrence's young and uneducated protagonist quickly finds her feet, gaining literacy at a frenetic pace, but soon realizes she may not be cut out to follow all the library's rules. Meanwhile, in a distant corner of the same library, a young man grapples with his weighty relationship to the cavernous building that acts as his prison. Over several generations, five children disappeared inside the library's Mechanism, a well-guarded mystery structure that can bring any book to life. Years later, the Mechanism spat Evar and his four "siblings" out together, un-aged, into a world in which they may now be the last of their kind--and though they've left the Mechanism, they still can't leave the library. Each child emerged with a particular skill set honed by the book they happened to be carrying at the time of their disappearance. All except for Evar, that is. Where the others returned with advanced knowledge in combat, subterfuge, and the humanities, "Evar had emerged with nothing, just the sense that something had been torn from his memory, leaving a chasm so wide he could fall into it and never be found." More than 10 years after his return, a full-grown Evar sets out to track down the mystery woman he lost in the Mechanism, who now exists only as a gap in his memories. In his search, he crosses paths with Livira, who becomes preoccupied with his mission herself. What follows is a madcap adventure full of political intrigue, time travel, philosophy, and romance. Lawrence works with many threads here, but none feels misused or insufficiently explored. Rather, the author unspools them masterfully, leaving behind a tightly woven tapestry that readers will ache to see finished even if they can predict one or two of the tale's myriad twists and turns. Gripping, earnest, and impeccably plotted.

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