The Book That Wouldn’t Burn (The Library Trilogy, #1)

by Mark Lawrence

“How can they let it all burn?” she demanded. “They?” Yute asked. “Them! The assistants.” She waved her arms as if it might help. “You know. Like the one who somehow turned all these people’s food to dust by lifting his little finger. They can’t stop a fire . . . or just provide fireproof books?” “Everything is a compromise.” Yute raised his hand so she could see over his shoulder the ring whose moonstone he had joked could hold every book in every chamber of the library. “The assistants are Irad’s servants. The dark that escapes from between, the blackness that’s the library’s own blood, is what Jaspeth bends to his will.” Yamala glanced at her husband and tutted, as if she disapproved of such candour. Yute ignored her and carried on. “The library exists on the knife edge between their conflict—their disagreement. It hangs in a web of checks and balances. The library is both the tree and the apple. It offers not knowledge of good and evil but knowledge for good or evil. Of course fire could be forbidden. But one of the compromises that holds back the war—not your little one here, but the big one—is the agreement that if a civilisation is not capable of keeping a book from burning then perhaps it wasn’t ready for whatever knowledge was held within.”