About the Book
-
Author:
- Mark Lawrence
Cover Story: Paradise by the Reading Lamp
Drinking Buddy: Hells Yes
MPAA Rating: R (violence, sexuality, egregious use of the F word)
Talky Talk: 500 Pages and I Couldn’t Stop
Bonus Factors: Library, Star Crossed Lovers
Bromance Status: Onward
Cover Story: Paradise by the Reading Lamp
So the infinite floors filled with nothing but shelves and shelves of well-organized books. Give me a coffee pot, a comfy chair, and maybe a couple of cats, and I could spend a decade or two there.
The Deal:
Livira is a ‘Duster.’ She lives in the squalor of a miserable village outside The City. When her settlement is destroyed by a gang of ‘sabbers’, wolf-like humanoids, she’s taken to the city where she begins to work for The Library. Now we’re not just talking about two stories with a nice children’s area and a reading room. Nor are we talking about a huge edifice like the New York Public Library. No, this is a bigger-on-the-inside planet-sized structure. It goes on forever. Every book–every book–is in there. People have been known to get lost and starve in some of the more remote areas. Books the size of humans, books bound in flesh, stone shelves that rise for miles…it’s all there. Livira and her friends are not allowed inside, of course. That’s the province of the Librarians, the only ones who know how to find anything in the massive structure. You see, knowledge is power, and only they can interpret the ancient texts for the king. Just enough that he doesn’t repeat the mistakes of the past. But Livira wanders through the wrong passage and winds up in a different world…where she meets a young man named Evar.
Evar, who narrates the alternate chapters, lives in the ruins of a single library chamber (which is still the size of a city). He and his adopted siblings wear clothes made of book covers, grow food in paper mulch, and spend time in a device that helps them absorb all the knowledge in a book. But he dreams of a strange woman…and has discovered a book inscribed to him, warning him not to read it. And then, one day, he falls through a portal and meets a girl named Livira.
Drinking Buddy: Hells Yes
These were two characters you could fall in love with. Livira, working her way through the ranks of academia, trying to shake off the shame of being a Duster. Evar, constantly bullied by his siblings, desperate for the world of his dreams. Will the kids settle down in a remote wing of the library and pass their days in quiet study? Or will outside forces keep them apart? Evar and his adopted family also suffered at the hands of the Sabbers, but his memories seem remote from Livira’s experiences. Are they even from the same plane of existence?
MPAA Rating: R (violence, sexuality, egregious use of the F word)
For a couple of readers, these two sure get into a lot of battles. And as things progress, it’s obvious that Evar lives in Livira’s distant future, long after the library has been reduced to a fraction of its former glory. Actually, the author keeps dropping hints that they are both from our distant future. People use the phrase ‘We’re not in Kansas anymore,’ not knowing what Kansas means–perhaps it’s a state of being. Evar agrees that it probably is a state.
Complicating things is that time passes differently for both heroes. When Evar first meets Livira, she’s a girl of ten, making me assume this would not be a romance. But when they meet again, only a few minutes have passed for Evar, and seven years have passed for Livira. And they next time they meet, she’s aged again, now Evar’s age. Maybe they are meant to be together, if they could hang out in the same time period before Livira turns into an old woman.
Talky Talk: 500 Pages and I Couldn’t Stop
This book was over 500 pages and is apparently the first in a series. I never lost interest, but damn, that’s quite a read. Secondary characters began to run together and the whole universe the author created started to get a little tedious by the end. Honestly, I think this book could have been told only from Livira’s POV, with Evar narrating the next volume. Still, I was flipping pages till the end.
Bonus Factor: Library
Admit it. We’ve all had that fantasy about owning a mansion with a two-story library. Or a Hobbit hole filled with books. Or having our own little bookstore. So wouldn’t a library of infinite proportions be awesome?
Well, yes and no. First of all, not every book is interesting, and our heroes have to deal with a lot of books that are nothing but boring reference tomes. And nothing in the library is cataloged very well (or in Evar’s time, at all). Generations of rival librarians have arranged and rearranged the books for their own political agendas, and only a fraction of them at that. Also, the library has automated guardians, even in Evar’s era, that look poorly on trespassers and book vandals.
Still, I could see myself retiring in the library caves, scouring the shelves for my next favorite read. Also, librarians are truly the unsung heroes of the universe.
Bonus Factor: Star Crossed Lovers
So our two main characters live in different eras and can only see each other through funky dimensional doors. That’s hard enough. But about halfway through the book, we get a twist that makes their romance even more doomed. I’m not a fan of mid-book twists, but this worked.
Bromance Status: Onward
I read all of James Clavell’s books in college and survived. I can finish this series, even if I can’t lift it.
Literary Matchmaking
The idea of a library filled with forbidden knowledge is a very H.P. Lovecraft concept.
Darius & Twig, by Walter Dean Myers, is another book about how a good librarian can save the day.
Anne M. Pillsworth’s Summoned also delves into the concept of forbidden books and knowledge.
FCC Full Disclosure: I received a free copy of this book from the publisher, but no library card to the forbidden archives.
