Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1)

by Sarah Rees Brennan

Book characters were dangerously attractive in the safest way. You didn’t even know what they looked like, but you knew you liked it.

Reading a book was like meeting someone for the first time. You don’t know if you will love them or hate them enough to learn every detail, or skim the surface never to know their depths.

Is truth stone, or is it water? If enough people walk through a world in their imaginations, a path forms. What’s reality, except something that really affects us? If enough people believe in something, doesn’t it become real?”

Finding a favourite character was discovering a soul made of words that spoke to your own.

“Have you never considered art grants us the impossible? Art opens a door into someone else’s imagination and lets us walk through. Art is the dreamed-of escape. Art lets the dead speak and the living laugh. Art takes you away from pain when no medicine can save you. Art is the first and last word. Art is the final consolation.”

Rae remembered turning twenty, spending the day in the grip of furious, uncontrollable tears. She’d raged because so many heroes were teenagers, even in books meant for adults. It felt like the age of magic was over for her, and all there was left to do was die.