Returns (The Library Trilogy, #1.6)

by Mark Lawrence

There are few worse crimes in our lore than a broken spine, a dogeared page. But the men and women, the souls, the … things … that wrote those books cared about the words. The ideas. Not the object. They would rather the books themselves fell apart after ten years in the hands of the thousandth reader than persist for eons on a shelf, waiting for the fire’s inevitable fingers to turn their pages.”