Two strangers find themselves connected by a vast and mysterious library containing many wonders and still more secrets, in this powerfully moving first book in a new series from the international bestselling author of Red Sister and Prince of Thorns.
The boy has lived his whole life trapped within a book-choked chamber older than empires and larger than cities.
The girl has been plucked from the outskirts of civilization to be trained as a librarian, studying the mysteries of the great library at the heart of her kingdom.
They were never supposed to meet. But in the library, they did.
Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another. A journey on which knowledge erodes certainty and on which, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, blood will be spilled and cities burned.
Book Club Recommendation
For August, we democratically chose this book to be read and discussed in our book club. The person suggesting it had already repeatedly expressed how much he enjoyed reading it. We were thus quite intrigued although I hadn’t heard anything about Mark Lawrence or his books before him. I was quite late on starting the book, so I eventually continued the story as an audio book. But even before that I repeatedly felt myself loosing grip on the story. The beginning was not able to immediately draw me in. I nonetheless believed the others’ praise and fought my way through to the more interesting parts. For me, those began with the second pov and the events taking place in the teased library.
Mystery and Fantasy
The story starts with Livira and her very distant life in a desert, suddenly destroyed by sabbers. We are shortly after almost completely cut off from that setting and the danger of the sabbers. Instead, Livira starts a traineeship in a library, to where she got through her confidence and smartness. Although I didn’t know where the story was going, I quickly grew fond of Livira. So did I of Evar, our second pov. As his perception of the library soon contradicted Livira’s, the mystery unfolds. I had many theories while listening to this story but in a way only scraped on the surface.
„One thing’s for sure, I’m not in kansas anymore.“ It was a phrase in half the languages he knew and one that had led to a saying almost as ancient: „We don’t even know what kansas is anymore.“ Mayland said that in the histories some held it to be a real place, some a mythical city, and others still an enlightened state of being.
Original
The setting and the characters of this novel are surely fascinating. The plot additionally makes this story unique and amazing. I waited for the hoped for first encounter of our protagonists, fully unaware of what this encounter would induce. Their life in linked disconnection is thrilling to follow and the mysteries within the story shocking to see untangled. Especially in the later part of the book, the events tumble over each other, which made it nonetheless hard for me to fully take them in. Due to the following confusion, the social commentary I suspect behind some revelations has not yet fully sunken in. I nonetheless suspect a comment on othering and our perception of unknown people.
In conclusion,
This book is an original and magical adventure which mostly takes place in a single place. The magic especially lies in the guarded mysteries that only slowly unfold throughout the story. Plot twists and action-packed scenes eventually take over and suppress the development of the setting and characters. There is certainly still a lot to unpack in this story.
The author:
Mark Lawrence was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. After earning a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College London, he went back to the US to work on a variety of research projects, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program. Since returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He never had any ambition to be a writer, so he was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight. His first trilogy, The Broken Empire, has been universally acclaimed as a groundbreaking work of fantasy, and both Emperor of Thorns and The Liar’s Key have won the David Gemmell Legend Award for best fantasy novel. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol. Source