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

by Mark Lawrence

At the square’s centre stood a round, stone-sided pond, dwarfing the trough they’d just drunk from. It had a stone . . . creature . . . at the middle, spouting streams of sparkling water into the air.

I feel like this will be noted later, chekovs gun and all that

Livira found it hard to believe that people could have built it all. Maybe the gods that they no longer believed in had done the work.

WAIT IVE READ THE SECOND BOOK, I BET I KNOW WHAT BUILT IT

The bit she never understood was why anyone did what they said. Soldiers, her aunt would say. The king has soldiers. But why, Livira asked, did the soldiers do what he said? None of it made sense to her. Her aunt would tell her not to spoil the story with all her questions. Malar was the only soldier here, and it didn’t seem as if he was going to stop her.

“T’loth criis’tyla loddotis,” Yute growled. “You told Hendron that all of this”—he waved his arm at the building—“was yours now and that you would accept his surrender.”

three curved swords, one broken, all of them rusted beyond use, and a broken staff polished by the touch of innumerable hands.

“Oh, Evar Eventari, she was never the one for you. That girl’s still waiting.”

Yesterday it had been a perfectly round wooden door painted green with a yellow brass knob in the middle.

Hobbit hole?

“Gods below! We’ll have to burn those! And where are your shoes?” “In the future.” Livira was tired of being judged.

Kindness carries a weight; it’s a burden all its own when you have nothing.

Some people strive so hard for centre stage—bleed themselves dry for your attention—and when they finally get there and the lights find them, they discover that all they had to say is ‘I was here.’ ” He frowned. “Though in truth, that might be an accurate precis of much of our great literature.”

“None of us really know what we’re here for or what we’re supposed to be doing. So, we shout out, hoping someone will hear, hoping someone will see us and reveal the great secret.”

And suddenly of all the many mysteries crowding her day Livira found the strangest to be that a man would seem so out of place in his own home.

The mountainside was once carved to look like the face of a god, with the entrance as his roaring mouth.” He drew a few deep breaths. “It was a very unsettling sight . . . I imagine.”

hmmm "I imagine"

Salt-white, the same as the rest of him. She would have thought in flesh so pale the veins would stand out like the city streets seen from the mountain, but none showed.

“Language changes as it ages, becoming unrecognisable to itself in just ten generations. Our library is old. Not old like cities and civilisations but old like this mountain. Vanishingly few of its works have been written in living memory. Expect to wrestle with change. The books before you are fossils. Relics of an earlier age that have survived against all odds and in the face of common sense itself. “And like the branches of a tree, language forks and forks again until the common root is barely a whisper. Those branches spread and touch distant lands where strange tongues reshape both words and grammar, and where strange hands find new alphabets in which to trap new sounds. And that’s just for books from our world.”

A prism can divide white light into an infinity of shades. The colours of the rainbow are simply a taxonomy applied reductively for convenience of use. Where indigo ends and violet begins is a debate that might be substituted for any shelving argument amongst librarians seeking to place a novel. Even fact and fiction can bleed into one another.

ganar

AH IT WAS MENTIONED SO EARLY IN THE FIRST BOOK

It told of the first two people. This original generation was the first to sin against the god who had made them. The first crime to be committed was the pursuit of knowledge. For the first murder one had to wait until the second generation when the couple’s children grew to adulthood and one brother murdered another. The first murderer had a son, Enoch, who founded the first city. And within that city, in the fourth generation, Enoch’s son, Irad, had founded the first library—the athenaeum.

opinions gather the most weight most swiftly if you can point at the ancient text that backs you up.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that if you don’t have anything nice to say then don’t say anything at all?” Livira shook her head. “She died when I was little, but I’d remember if she’d said something that stupid.”

Many sources report that Irad’s great-grandmother was tricked into an education by a smooth-talking serpent. Whilst the records agree that she and her husband were evicted by their landlord shortly afterwards, the exact reasons remain an area of academic dispute. It is known with more certainty that once Irad founded the first library—the athenaeum—the serpent became a regular visitor, being credited with controlling the rat population.

Scent is a peg on which memories are hung.

There is a scurrilous but persistent rumour that, under pressure from King Dubya and later from his son, Oanold, a great many books written in sabbertine were removed from the shelves, leaving the catalogue free of any works by their kind. These days, the suggestion that a sabber can reason, let alone read and write, is apt to earn a beating from the king’s justices.

It was Jaspeth’s and Irad’s grandfather who invented fratricide, and at an early age the brothers resolved to use other means to settle their differences. When Irad raised the first library, a temple to the sin of knowledge, a stone house in which his great-grandmother’s original crime could shelter, Jaspeth resolved to tear it down. In previous generations a death would have followed. Instead, they found an uneasy compromise and the echoes of their bickering have rattled down eternity’s corridors. The Library Myth, by Mayland Shelfborn

Ravens. Always the ravens. When Abel fell to Cain, a raven watched, hungry for the dead man’s eyes. When Cain’s son laid the foundation stone of Enoch, a raven watched, hungry for shelter. And when Irad raised the first library, a raven settled on the capstone, hungry for knowledge.

Understandably, the vast majority of literature on childbirth describes the process from the mother’s perspective or that of the physician in attendance. Occasionally, the father’s point of view is covered, be it striding the corridors whilst puffing furiously on cigars, or hip-deep in the birthing pool shouting misguided encouragement. The person being thrust into a new world through a wet tunnel is generally overlooked.

“One thing’s for sure, I’m not in kansas anymore.” It was a phrase in half the languages he knew and one that had led to a saying almost as ancient: “We don’t even know what kansas is anymore.” Mayland said that in the histories some held it to be a real place, some a mythical city, and others still an enlightened state of being. Evar leaned towards agreeing with those who thought it was a state.

from Ectran, primarily boats fishing close to the Broken Shore. All of which suggests that rather than an invasion, what we are seeing is in fact a migration. Reliable sources west of the Thellion Confederacy are rare, but the names skour, scare, scar, and, most commonly, skeer, crop up time and again. We don’t know the nature of this foe that has driven such a vast horde of sabbers from their ancestral lands. But one can be sure that—even when we discard fanciful tales of vast white spiders devouring all they encounter—they must be implacable to make the sabbers know fear.

“In you I see a spark like no other, and when you’re grown, I hope it will become such a light that it will show us a way out.” He steepled his pale fingers, then interlaced them. “And make no mistake, child, we are trapped.”

“Yute told me a great writer once said that fiction was easy—all you have to do is sit in front of a blank page and bleed.”

When a ganar sets the table for a skeer it is important to understand that the more genteel aspects of afternoon tea must be abandoned. Two very different species taking refreshment together must seek to accommodate their sometimes clashing natures. The skeer’s preference for dismembering its prey live can, with a positive attitude, coexist alongside the ganar’s taste for small but exquisitely decorated cakes.

Evar nodded again, feeling that he was always three steps behind in conversations with Livira.

girly has adhd

“Years ago, ‘sabber’ used to be just another word for ‘enemy,’ ” Livira said. “Like ‘foe’ or ‘opponent.’ I guess we were always meant to fight them.”

Everything we see is seen through the lens of our expectation.

There were . . . creatures . . . there, about half my height but wider and hunched over and covered in shaggy yellowish hair. Just mounds of hair really. With legs. And arms.” Evar made a circle with both hands to show arms thicker than Livira’s body. “And a kind of single claw from the back of their hands, like a blade.”

A moment of curiosity saw him take from his pocket the corner of parchment that he’d found at the edge of Livira’s pool on his first visit to the Exchange. He held it out between finger and thumb. Immediately it began to flutter. Its dance grew faster and more wild when he shifted his grip to the very edge—as if it were only a ghost when in his possession and felt the wind most strongly when he had least contact with it. With an unexpected howl the wind tore it from him and in an eye-blink the night had it.

This is where I wish I'd annotated it from the beginning bc PUZZLE PIECES

withstand.

So in theory, he lost the paper in liviras time, so could this potentially be crath ?

Few things are worse enemies of civilisation than a corrupt official, but an honest official of corrupt laws is definitely one of them.

The fact that the assistant seemed to know how to follow Livira, even when out of sight and faced with many choices, was a worrying one.

might be bc later you find out livira is the assistant

He’d fought like a god of war. She felt that even Malar would have been impressed.

first of all, you're thirsty lmao second of all, (spoiler) malar taught him

writing is an exercise in letting your mind wander but making sure that it keeps what it picks up on the way.

Quite how he had secured and kept his current rank was a matter of fierce speculation among the trainees.

p sure he's married to the head librarian

All of us steal our lives. A little here, a little there. Some of it given, most of it taken. We wear ourselves like a coat of many patches, fraying at the edges, in constant repair. While we shore up one belief, we let go another. We are the stories we tell to ourselves. Nothing more.

People don’t want truth. They say that they do but what they mean is that they want the truth to agree with them.

Master Logaris raised a bushy eyebrow then shrugged. “Don’t beat the boy. It was probably the girl’s fault.”

rude as hell

He’d mentioned that he had been getting reports accusing her of extracurricular activities for which the lightest punishment was expulsion. His parting advice had been not to get caught doing it.

I love yute

“Malar!” Livira whirled around. Malar took a step backwards. “What’s up with your face, girl?” “What?” Livira pressed both hands to her cheeks, searching, then caught the glint of starlight in Malar’s eyes. “It’s called smiling, you idiot. I’m pleased to see you!” “No accounting for taste.” Malar shrugged and looked at Meelan. “And this would be Sirrar Meelan. I’m to escort you two to Yute’s place, on account of how murdery things tend to get every time Livira leaves the library.” “Once!” Livira protested. “OK, twice, but it was on the same day.” “The only day you’ve visited.” Malar pushed between them and took the lead. “Come on then. I’ve got a beer waiting.”

I love them

All of us in our secret hearts, in our empty moments of contemplation, stumble into the understanding that nothing matters. There’s a cold shock of realisation and, in that moment, we know that nothing at all is of the least consequence. Ultimately, we’re all just spinning our wheels, seeking to avoid pain until the clock winds down and our time is spent. To give someone purpose is to free them, however briefly, from the spectre of that knowledge.” Meelan whistled softly. “What did you say to that?” “That my price was still three silvers and two wouldn’t cut it.” Livira snorted laughter. “A good imitation.” Malar had caught Yute’s gentle, rather distracted tone well, and the fact that he was given to wandering into speeches as if everything still amazed him and he was keen to share each new epiphany. “Still, you remembered what he said. So, he must have made an impression.” The former soldier shot her a narrow look. “You’re not the only one with a good memory, girly. And I remember everyone who tries to short me!”

Salamonda had the door open almost as Meelan’s knuckles made contact with the wood. “Livira!” She looked past Meelan. “And who’s this? You’ve traded in your last boyfriend for one that’s a prince?” “He’s not my boyfriend.” Livira hurried up the steps and pushed Meelan past Salamonda. “You should fix that,” Salamonda said in a too-loud whisper as Livira came through. “He’s lovely.”

I love her

“Hurts don’t stop, but they fade into shadows of what they were. That’s sad. That something so vital, something that bit you so deep, can be eroded by time into a story that almost seems like it happened to someone else. Any hurt. The years have taken away her meaning. It lessens us.”

fucking ouchy