Reviews - The Book That Broke the World

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1.26k reviews for:

The Book That Broke the World

Mark Lawrence

3.97 AVERAGE

torins_bookshelf's review against another edition

4.5

adventurous

morgan475's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Faster paced than the first in the trilogy, and left me excited for the last one! Really get a feeling for the complexity of each of the characters in this one!

eva_steentjes's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

acaciathorn's review

2.5

adventurous dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: No

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

I was really looking forward to this book, but unfortunately it did not live up to expectations. I understand that this is a time travel story, with people sliding back and forth across the centuries, but at a certain point you need to have your main characters occupy the same space or their relationship with one another cannot progress. Livira — the audacious, brilliant, action-oriented protagonist of the first book — is largely absent from this one, even though it was her book that wouldn't burn, and her book that broke the world. I didn't hate the new POV characters or anything; I just found myself repeatedly wishing that I were reading about Livira instead. The ending splits her and her love interest apart yet again mere hours after they are FINALLY reunited, which made me want to tear my hair out.

Overall, I think my biggest problem with the sequel is that it introduces additional chaos without substantively advancing the plot. Much of the story takes place in the past, and while the events that occur there serve to complicate the present, the whole thing feels like a distraction. I want to know what's going to happen to the characters I care about — characters who increasingly feel like flotsam adrift on the sea of a vast ideological struggle, with no control over their own destiny. I'm not sure how the author is going to tie all the disparate threads together in the final book, but I guess we'll wait and see.

2.5 stars, docked half a star for sheer disappointment.