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

by Mark Lawrence

‘There are no useless skills, girl. Only talents that have yet to find an application.’

Without guilt we would all be monsters. And memory is the ink with which we list our crimes.

In the third age of the Arcadian Federation, man’s mastery of nature reached such heights that disease was undone, age defeated, and even the stars were claimed as jewels in humanity’s crown. In short, any dream might be made real. But some dreams are dark. The Dust of Arcadia. A fragment. Author unknown.

There are moments in life when you know with a great and unshakeable certainty that everything will change.

Evar! Don’t turn the page. I’m in the Exchange. Find me at the bottom—

It seems clear that, like archetypes in works of fiction, certain cities spring up wherever the conditions allow – though from what spores, I cannot say. The origins of the name remain unknown, lost amid dozens of theories. Like children’s names, falling in and out of common use, the names of great cities can recur after long periods of dormancy and be passed from ruin to building site in quick succession, creating dynasties in stone to rival any royal house. A History of Crath City, by Kerra Brews

… debate of carrot or stick. And for many children these are valid considerations. Marquart, however, reminds us that for some few, a stick would be required to keep them from such knowledge rather than drive them to it. It is important to investigate the origin and breeding of these outliers. Such a child is a spark, and only a fool invites fire into their library. On the Education of the Lower Classes, by Einald, Duke of Ferra

Some words are so suited to their task that they keep their role within scores of tongues. Some sentiments transcend language. When spoken, expressions of love or hate rarely require translation for the meaning to penetrate. The Common Roots of Etruscan and Old Miscenren, by Axit Orentooroo

Steel demands to be used.

… scattered in the streets, the bodies of the smaller children already carried away by wild dogs. The town of Lakehome was younger than its oldest resident, Kanna Gelt, who first built a log home on Shimere’s shore. In a scant fifty years its population had grown to over five hundred souls. Fewer than twenty made it to the gates of Crath City. Most of those who survived the sabbers’ raid succumbed to the hardships of the Dust. Cratalacs alone accounted for nearly forty disappearances. Not a single night passed without … Eyewitness Accounts of the Lakehome Incident, collated by Algar Omesta

… sorting hat! But even the most sober of systems must admit the possibility that the judgements levelled against the young, no matter how exhaustive the testing on which they might be based, must allow some ‘wiggle room’. On the forest floor certain blooms unfurl long after snowdrops and crocuses have tested the icy crust … Career Advice for Mid-Ranking Civil Servants, by R. I. Perrin

Kindness carries a weight; it’s a burden all its own when you have nothing. Some undeniable part of Livira wanted to bite the hands that offered so much so freely. Pride is stupid, pride is blind, but pride is also the backbone that runs through us: without pride there’s no spring-back, no resilience.

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”.’

We humans are herd animals. When several gather to browse in one spot, more will come. Few places offer more eloquent testimony to this fact than does a library, wherein our focus ensures some few books scarcely touch the shelves from the moment of their binding until the day they fall apart from overuse. Whilst all around, in sullen silence, the unloved show their spines in endless rows, aching for the touch that never comes. The Art of the Index, by Dr H. Worblehood

‘Language is like a tree,’ Logaris said apropos of nothing, his deep voice descending from on high as if declaiming a favourite poem. ‘It grows and changes too slowly for us to see, and yet we know that it was once a seed small enough to be lost in the breadth of our palm, and we know that one day it will topple and die and rot away.’

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. Compromise: A Librarian’s Tale, by Davris Yute

Like all hunters, sorrow advances on slow, silent feet, until the last moment when it attacks from cover, springing with such speed that the impact rocks its victim on their heels.

The larger a ship, the more consideration must be given to its course. Any turn must be plotted well in advance. Indeed, for the largest of vessels, it is advisable to set the rudder in the desired direction before casting off at the port of origin. Great Sailing Ships of History: An Architectural Comparison, by A. E. Canulus

Cavers are, for many, the very definition of bravery. For a non-subterranean species to face the fear of tight spaces in depths where light has never ventured requires courage. But ask the caver who they admire, and without fail they will name the divers. Those who practise that same madness, but through flooded caverns and flowing tunnels. Secrets of the Deep, by Miles Stanton

For all but the most damaged of us, doubt is the other side of that coin. Success, even if earned through hard toil, comes hand in hand with the belief that one is an impostor, admitted to an inner sanctum by mistake and without invitation. The performer watches that sea of adoring faces with the firm belief that at any moment one among the crowd will voice their doubt, and as the tide must turn, so must their audience. Limelight and Grease Paint: An Autobiography, by Sir John Good

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. Shadows of the Athenaeum, by Methuselah Deusson

When asked to pick from the treasure chest of the divine and take just one power, it is often that of flight, or of invisibility that prove to be the most popular choice. The power to find that which has been lost is commonly overlooked. But when one considers just how much our kind have lost, and how often, then the wisdom of such a path is … Dewey Decimal Classification, by Henry M. Stanley

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. The Purge, by Anon

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. Birds of a Feather, by Robert J. N. Adams

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. The Three Hundred Lives of Jemimah Button, by Jemimah Button

The importance of ‘between’ is often overlooked in the hurry of getting from one place to another. In truth it is these interstitial spaces, which, in their linking of this to that and of now to then, might be considered a more fundamental layer in reality’s manifold. Connective Tissue, by C. S. Leylandii

… 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. Intelligence report XXVI–CXX, from the desk of Lord Algar Omesta

Strong arms propelled him through the door, and the wet pavement received him. He railed first against the bouncers who had identified his interloping and had ejected him without ceremony. When his ire had been spent, he declared to passing strangers that the party had been a terrible bore. And when his audience had gone beyond hearing, he studied his shoes, wondering what failing had marked him out, and how he might sneak back into the warmth, the light, the music, but most of all the company of others. Pygmalion’s Progress, by Anneta Drew

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. Four-score men and four-score more, Could not make Humpty Dumpty where he was before. Juvenile Amusements, by Samuel Arnold

Loss is often remembered in the hands. Fingers recall the feel of a baby’s hair. Touch explores the places where they have lain, still hoping to rediscover a child long after the mind and even the heart have surrendered. A Study of Infant Mortality, by Tyler Dickerson

All boundaries are challenged by those that neighbour them. Even divides as certain as truth or fiction become fraught on close inspection. The library contains novels written in the style of a historian, leading the unwary down rabbit holes into imaginary pasts wherein sabbers built great cities and dwelt within them, aping the habits of man. Obviously, such flights of fancy are unlikely to mislead any but the most foolish reader, but other variations on the truth may be sufficiently plausible to trick even the most erudite. Know Your Library, by Axon Bloom

They say that you can never go back – and that’s true, we change and so the places we return to will not seem the same. But here it’s the case that the city has grown as much as you have. Ask yourself in the face of the remarkable speed of progress: where did we come from, where are we going, and – most importantly – have we walked this path before?’

Start a tale, just a little tale that should fade and die—take your eye off it for just a moment and when you turn back it’s grown big enough to grab you up in its teeth and shake you. That’s how it is. All our lives are tales. Some spread, and grow in the telling. Others are just told between us and the gods, muttered back and forth behind our days, but those tales grow too and shake us just as fierce. Prince of Fools, by Mark Lawrence

‘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.’

‘He said a story is a net. It can capture something as large as the spirit of the age or as small as the emotion of a man watching the last leaf fall from a tree, or sometimes both, and make one a reflection of the other.’

… more popular than the hall of mirrors. The distortions offered by these curved reflectors vary from the comical to the uncanny. Few things have the power to unsettle us as much as a face that is almost, but not quite, right. The lesson of the mirror hall is one of perception. A change of angle, the addition of fresh distortion, or removal of existing distortion, can change entirely our view of someone we thought we knew. Carnival Entertainments in Southeast Lithgow, by Mitch Kable

Trust is the most insidious of poisons, but there are many alternatives that serve almost as well. As with comedy, delivery is a vital component. If the target is aware of the attack, the chances for success are immediately much reduced. Venom, by Sister Apple

Secrets should never be held too closely, for a secret that is clung to will shape its keeper and in that twisting of their being it will reveal itself. The best-kept secrets are pushed aside, levered to the extremities of the mind, so far from the day’s thinking that to press them any further away would be to forget them entirely. The Truth, and Other Matters of Opinion, by Gustav Bergmann

… ginger beer. I say, let’s follow him. He seems a bad sort. By God, I think you’ve solved it, Fanny. He does look suspicious. Come on, Volente. Such a good dog! Yes, you are. I dare say we could all do with a jolly good walk and a bracing … Six Go On and On, by Enanald Byten

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. The Insectoid Who Came To Tea, by Celcha Arthran

Everything we see is seen through the lens of our expectation. Our prejudice provides a broad brush, imagination sprinkles detail, some of which may actually be there. We ascribe meaning and intent with a careless disregard for our constant failure at such prediction. One is forced to wonder if the blindman’s hands lie to him as eloquently as vision does to the sighted. Illusion, by Copper Davidfield

… on the third day of the seventh month, Ella reported spotting three ghosts standing at the riverside in full daylight, watching the fishermen land their catch. The astonishment with which the phantoms observed the process matched her own in finding that she alone could see them. Ghost in the Machine, by James Watt

Few things are worse enemies of civilization than a corrupt official, but an honest official of corrupt laws is definitely one of them. Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes, by Juvenal

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.

War is often described as long periods of boredom, punctuated by moments of terror. A description that is functionally identical to many people’s lives. The Pursuit of Happiness, by Alfred J. Prooffrock

Whilst it is the first words of a child that often gain notoriety among the family, it’s their last words that are more likely to continue to roll down eternity’s slope. For those whose path leads to the executioner’s stage, this presents the rare opportunity to reach an audience far beyond the picnickers, gawkers, delighted enemies, and misty-eyed lovers who might crowd in upon the day itself. Always the Bright Side, by M. P. Thon

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 realization 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.’

‘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.’ He paused, as if realizing that his words had carried him away, then shrugged. ‘It is what it is.’

‘When a dog stops barking, that’s when you should be most afraid of its bite.’