#52. Published in 2024 – The Book That Broke The World by Mark Lawrence (Hardback)

If I struggled with some categories in this challenge, this was the one where I immediately knew what I was going to read. 

In 2023 I had a big birthday. One of the things I did during the year was go for a personalised shopping experience with friends…complete with champagne. I’m not normally a lover of shopping, I hate traipsing around clothes racks, so this was the perfect way to shop…get someone else to do the donkey work for you! Once finished, and arms aching with carrier bags, we went past Waterstones. Now there is one type of shop I don’t mind spending hours in, so we popped in and I was captivated by a book called “The Book That Wouldn’t Burn. I’m not normally a lover of the Sci-Fi or Fantasy genres, but there was something about the cover and title which captivated me. I took the book on holiday and loved every minute of it, and I couldn’t wait for the second book in this gripping trilogy. Cue 2024 when Book #2 was released!

“We fight for the people we love. We fight for the ideas we want to be true.

Evar and Livira stand side by side and yet far beyond each other's reach. Evar is forced to flee the library, driven before an implacable foe. Livira, trapped in a ghost world, has to recover her book if she's to return to her life. While Evar's journey leads him outside into the vastness of a world he's never seen, Livira's destination lies deep inside her own writing, where she must wrestle with her stories in order to reclaim the volume in which they were written.

And all the while, the library quietly weaves thread to thread, bringing the scattered elements of Livira's old life – friends and foe alike – back together beneath new skies.

Long ago, a lie was told, and with the passing years it has grown and spread, a small push leading to a chain of desperate consequences. Now, as one edifice topples into the next with ever-growing violence, it threatens to break the world. The secret war that defines the library has chosen its champions and set them on the board. The time has come when they must fight for what they believe, or lose everything.”

I pre-ordered The Book That Broke the World, then I wondered if I was going to be disappointed with the sequel. So often a sequel lets you down, it doesn’t live up to expectations. If I’m honest, I can’t say whether this book is better or worse than the first. It’s a bit different. It’s like trying to compare apples with pears. The first book is very much character led. At 559 pages, it has the scope to bring the reader into this different world inhabited by different characters. You learn about this strange world set in an infinite library, about characters of different races in different times and it is completely engrossing. In book #2, we know so much about the main characters, that the story needs to take a bit of a different direction. 

What I loved about this book was "The Story So Far" section, which served as a brilliant reminder of what had happened in the first book. I wish more authors would do this. If I’m reading a series of books, I get so annoyed if the author diverges from the flow of the story to issue long rambling reminders of what has previously happened to their characters (J K Rowling take note!)

Mark Lawrence's The Book That Broke The World is the second book in the author's "Library Trilogy", and whilst it continues to follow Evar and Livera’s story, a new perspective is introduced in the form of a slave called Celcha and her brother. As her character arc grows, we see how her story weaves into the lives of Evar and Livera. 

For me, the main character of these books is the infinite library. It serves as a memory of the universe; civilisations are always set on self-destruction, yet the library provides easy access to knowledge of what has happened before. It allows people to learn from the past. Books are powerful tools, they increase knowledge and knowledge is a dangerous thing, which is why there are those who believe the library should be destroyed, that civilisations should start from scratch with no prior knowledge of what went before them. Standing in the middle of this battleground are those who believe that there is a simple compromise, limit access to the library to The Librarians.

In The Book That Broke The World, focus is set on one specific book, that of Livera’s memoir. We pick up where we left off with Evar and Livira who are now separated by both space and time. They are embarking on separate journeys; Livera, who is trapped inside the library, is forced to confront her stories so she can gain control over them, whilst Evar has to set foot in an unfamiliar outside world in a fight for his life.

The narrative moves away from the two main characters to follow a new perspective, that of Celcha and her brother Hellet. They were born into a world of slavery, and knowledge is forbidden to slaves. When Hellett stumbles across a long-lost set of books and dares to open one, he is severely punished. But Celcha and Hellet work their way up the ranks until they become assistants to the Librarians who treat them more kindly than the slavers. This does not deter Hellet however, he announces to Celcha that he wants freedom, he wants justice for all slaves…he wants a revolution. Perhaps two ghostlike figures who haunt Celcha and Hallet throughout the book may offer a path towards their salvation.

My issue with the introduction of these two new important characters, is that this book is less character driven than the first one, it is more preoccupied with world building. In various emotional scenes, I didn’t feel they had strong enough personalities for me to be as connected to them as I was with some of the original characters. At only 384 pages long, I did feel there was enough bandwidth in the book for Lawrence to develop their creation a little further, especially Celcha who I felt was in the shadow of her more charismatic brother.

I was pleased that Arpix developed as a character in this sequel, especially his interactions with Evar’s siblings (including my favourite, Clovis, Evar’s extremely volatile sister!) And whilst we’re on the subject of favourite characters, as a lover of oversized black cats (I’m not saying my cat is fat) I’m glad Wentworth, Yute’s extremely large cat, was given an important role to play in the book. Not only can he track anyone, but he was able to provide Arpix with food and assist in fighting against the Skeers.

This was a darker, grittier book than the first instalment, but I really enjoyed it. Lawrence’s ability to write complex stories around multiple characters and timelines which converge and diverge is a remarkable feat. It might not be the easiest series of books to read, but you get as lost in the story as Livera does in the library!

“The greater tragedy of our world is not the victims of cruelty, but that so many of those victims would, given the opportunity, stand in the shoes of their oppressors and wield the same whip with equal enthusiasm.”

In a world where newspapers and the internet is filled with disinformation, and governments strive to ban books in a manner not so dissimilar from the Nazi’s burning books, “The Library Trilogy” allows Lawrence to make us question how the world uses and abuses knowledge. We live in a modern-day battlefield where it is not a simple fight between truth and lies, but one in which we need to decipher between rational information, and dangerous and emotive misinformation. I can’t wait for the third and final instalment of this gripping tale…I expect it will be an emotional rollercoaster.

Genre: Fiction, Science Fiction, Fantasy, Time Travel, Romance

Release Date: 11th April 2024

Publisher: Harper Voyager

Pages: 384

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