I am so pleasantly pleased by The Book That Broke the World. It feels different than the first, The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, but in a right way? Maybe I’m not describing that well. Keep reading this book review of The Book That Broke the World for my full thoughts.
Summary
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.
Review
(Disclaimer: I received this book from the publisher. This has not impacted my review which is unbiased and honest.)
First of all, I have to appreciate a summary for series – I will scream that we want to see more of this! The Book That Broke the World reminds me of an M. C. Escher piece of art not only in this balance of whimsy and madness, but also in the mind breaking scale. There’s a sense of twisted staircases that turn upon themselves, times that loop around in circles, and discovery around each corner. After the twists of The Book That Wouldn’t Burn, you can feel the distance between Livira and Evar even more so.
Part of that lies in the introduction and development of side characters like Arpix – a favorite of mine from the previous series opener. Thematically, The Book That Broke the World turns the concepts of peace and war, violence and ashes, over and over. It asks the age old question of wondering how one can truly attain peace if it’s on a road lined with blood and war. There’s a consistent level of revelations and plot twists which proves that Lawrence has more in store to reveal about this magical and entrancing library.
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What is even more impressive is that by the end of The Book That Broke the World I wasn’t even sure where I stood. When we are faced with a system that is broken, that needs to be fixed, do we try to renovate, to erect scaffolding, or do we need to start over, burn it all to the ground? Find The Book That Broke the World on Goodreads, Storygraph, Amazon, Bookshop.org, Blackwells, & Libro. fm.