A review by luluhouse7
The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence

emotional mysterious reflective slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

It had all the elements of a fantastic book -- great prose and character development, creative world building, themes of xenophobia/ethics of pursuit of knowledge/cyclical nature of civilization and war, a twisty mystery plot, and a star-crossed romance -- but somehow the whole thing fell kind of flat in the execution. Some of that is uneven pacing; I found myself alternating between being unable to put the book down and getting bored enough that I would switch to looking at my phone partway through a page or impatiently skimming to get to the next interesting part. This may have been in part due to Livira and Evars being the only fully developed characters but spending much of the book apart. Frequently it felt like the central plot was only moving when they were interacting and everything else was to set up those scenes. Unfortunately this meant that despite these being the scenes that pushed the story forward, their relationship was fairly underdeveloped as well. I'm also not sure the microcosm of Livira and Evars' stories were able to carry the themes of the book on their own, which lead to shallower and less subtle exploration of ideas due to telling instead of showing. Also, especially for the first half of the book, it had a tendency to repeat information about characters as if it were the first time.

Overall it had all the pieces but didn't quite work, probably because character, plot, and theme development came at the expense of one another. That said, Mark's prose is a joy to read, I loved Livira and Evars characters, the library and its mysteries were super fascinating, and I did not see the twist in the third act coming!