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 We've got medical stuff this week, so reviews will resume their regular schedule next week. Sorry!

The Book That Wouldn't Burn - Mark Lawrence

As long time readers will know, I'm a huge fan of Mark Lawrence's work. So I met the announcement of a new series, in a new world, with exhilaration and  dread. Because a new book, a new series, from an author I really enjoy reading, that's great news. Dread, because...like all of us, I can get comfortable in the familiar. What if this new series wasn't up to snuff? We went round on this already with Red Sister and Prince of Fools, and here we are again.  In short: I need not have worried, this book is great.

I'm happy to report that The Book That Wouldn't Burn is both really entertaining, and also, you know, just generally a really good book. Lawrence has pulled out all the stops to make a new, interesting, compelling story, in a rich, vibrant world. It got me to keep turning pages long after I should've been in bed, and, more importantly, I didn't regret that choice when I dragged myself out of bed in the morning. Because this is, simply put, a good time, and if you don't take anything from the rest of the review, take this: go buy this book, go read this book, go enjoy this book. 

Incidentally, for those of you wondering, the rest of the trilogy is already written, so you may as well start now.

Anyway. Appropriately for a story about books, much of it takes place in, well, a library. I say a library. It's more a cavernous complex, housed in the bowels of a mountain. Where travel times are measured in days. Where index systems for the contents are marks of power.. Where dross and society-changing concepts sit cheek-by-jowl, if you could manage to sort one from the other. The library is, I am saying, large. Maybe not quite large enough to have formed its own black hole, but I'm also not going to bet against it. And credit to Lawrence, he makes the library feel real. Indeed, it's almost a character in its own right. Filled with little rituals, day to day complexities, and of course, bureaucracy. Also filled with eldritch tomes, that researchers are trusted to go dig into the veins of, to find intellectual gold. You can feel the weight of history in the library, the way it changes hands between warring entities, from shifts in signage and doors that open one way or another. In the drifts of scattered paper and ash from old fires. The story excels at giving the library both a sense of place and a sense of age - a timeless ancient, a seeming rock before the ravages of time, it persists and changes on every glance. 

If the library is the central rock of place in the book, it's worth mentioning the city that has accreted around it. And the scattered steadings outside it, all of which huddle against the rock of all the knowledge in the world. The politics of the city are driven by the necessity of defence against an implacable enemy outside the walls, and by the need to dig into the guts of the library to try and find a way to make the city safe. There's centuries worth of myth and legend there, structured around the gain and loss of knowledge, and centuries worth of treatises on war, successful and otherwise. The one who rules the city can decide how what they find is dispensed to the inhabitants, and that gives rise to its own tensions - as does the current staff of the library deciding quite how much it's going to hand over to the city government. Which is to say that there's a bigger world out there, outside the confines and claustrophobia of the library, and Lawrence manages to keep us aware of that around the edges of awareness. The world is real, even the parts we don't see, or see less often.

Anyway. There's people here too! Livira and Evar are our protagonists, our windows on a world wrought by and distorted by knowledge, and by the certainty that outside the city is an enemy that would happily tear everything down. Livira...oh, I have a lot of time for her. Literally and figuratively, as we follow her from a childhood escaping from the enemy seeking to destroy the city, into an adulthood within the library. Livira is smart, witty, and unafraid. If she's not going to be able to bludgeon an enemy to death with a novel, she'll be able to figure out a way to make them regret crossing her path anyway. Watching her grow, and move out of isolation into a space where people care about her, and she cares about them, is a delight, and also allows for some thoughtful meditations on the nature of loneliness, social expectations, and ways to deal with both. A woman with a penchant for risks, and for doing what she thinks is right, Livira is driven to succeed, to rise above a society that wants to keep her in her place. And she works on doing that by being competent, by being lucky, and by having friends. She genuinely is a lot of fun to read, as she tried to fit into a space that is built to hate her, and drives forward, trying to shape the world to avoid being shaped by it. How she does that, and the costs...well. Read and find out.

Evar, by contrast, is never really alone. someone with a handful of siblings, he's constrained more by geography, unable to leave the same space where he's spent his entire life. Evar is the second best at everything, and if he doesn't resent it, is perhaps frustrated by it. Evar is charming, and manages to be knowledgeable and deadly whilst also being so self effacing that he remains rather fun to read along with. In this he's helped by a trauma which has shaped his understanding of who he is, and by his siblings, all of whom are both ferociously competent in their own areas of expertise, and quite obviously struggle in doing anything else. They're all struggling to survive, trying to understand the mystery of where they are and why...which is how they intersect with Livira. I don't want to touch on this in detail, except to say that this is a story which travels through time as well as space, and challenges our assumptions about how those things impact on each other. Suffice to say that Evar is, if a little naïve, definitely likeable, and if his life has been blighted by the enemy that would devour everything he holds dear, he manages to keep that down to a dull roar. 

Anyway. Our protagonists aren't the only people out there, of course. Though the focus on their intertwining fates, their isolation and loneliness, their passion and sense of truth and justice, are all vital to the story. But Evar has his siblings, rough and ready as they may be, and Livira has her gang of library colleagues and their superiors, some of whom are odd, some of whom are mysterious, some of whom are lethal, and some of whom are...all of the above. Its to the author's credit that every person we see actually feels real. They're alive and out there in a world that exists for them, where we just happen to be, strolling their stage for all the world like it's, well, all the world. There's a depth and flavoir and texture to even the most incidental characterisation that gives each individual more heft, more depth, makes them concrete and real.

Anyway. As ever, I don't want to spoil the story. But I will say it manages to be both sweepingly epic, and intimately beautiful. Occasionally it does both of those things at the same time. And it's really very clever, and emotionally affective and effective. It will make you Feel Things, friends. Be ready with the tissues.  And be ready for twists, turns, and revelations, a couple of which definitely made me go "Ha!". This is, no doubt, Mark Lawrence at his best. It's a beautiful world, with some wonderful characters, and a story that keeps you turning pages until it's done, and then makes you want ot re-read it right away so that it isn't over yet. 

Which is a very long winded way of saying, this is another great book from Mark Lawrence - go get a copy right now.

Tsalmoth - Steven Brust

Full disclosure, I've been a fan of Steven Brust's work for a long time. Especially his "Vlad" series, centred on the eponymous Vlad Taltos, one-time assassin, one time husband, now on the run and dealing with what we might charitably call "relationship issues". Tsalmoth is the latest in that sequence, which has hop-skip-and-jumped throughout Vlad's personal timeline over the years, showing us a young man trying to make a name for himself, through to an older, possibly wiser one trying to deal with the consequences of that reputation. Tsalmoth is mostly focused on the former, following a younger Vlad as he investigates a mystery, trying to recover a small amount of money owed, which snowballs until it becomes something else entirely. Something with wider ramifications.

I will say that this story works beause of its protagonist Because Vlad is smart until he isn't, and because he is, largely, honest with himself while we sit alongside his inner dialogue. He can be a lover, a killer, a man searching for redemption or a quiet life, a hero of sorts and a villain of same. And wearing all of those many hats, he's thoughtful, interesting, wry, slyly funny, and very human. There's a sense of immediccy, of energy, of reaching out toward a future he imagines as a bright one, shrotly before it explodes in his hand. Because if Vlad is the star of the show, Cawti, his soon to be wife, is a close second.  I rather like Cawti. She's no-nonsense, witty, a little bit romantic, and as willing to comment on the quality of a restaurant dish or the politics of equality for workers as she is to put a knife through someones eye. WHich is to say, very.  It's interesting to compare this pair of young lvoers, as they take their first steps of marital bliss, to what we know comes later in their lives - the joy and tragedy of knowing a little of how things will shake out before they do themselves. In any event, they're a vivacious pair, and one that captures every page they appear on. Brust's dialogue is a strong point, always able to raise a chuckle, or a gasp, or a tear - and his characters enable that by being fast talking, hard-feeling rogues, with hearts on their sleeves as well as swords at their belts.

And we're back in seaside Adrilahnka again. Over double-digits of books, Brust has managed to make the city as much of a character as the people which inhabit it, from the bustling nighbourhoods whose propserity is seemingly linkd to their place on the rotating caste-wheel that is Dragaeran life, to the glowering orange cloud that blocks out much of the light of the sun, to the sneeing, matter-of-fact prejudice by Dragaerans against "Easterners" like Vlad, there's texture and flavour in every morsel of description. When they sit down at a restaurant to hash out a business proposition, or skirt the edges of an abandoned house looking for trouble, or stand on the cloffs, looking at a sea which, in this case, isn't an amorphous murder-blob crated by runaway sorcery...well, you can feel the place, the years pressing in around, the drifting scents on the air and mutter of background dialogue. Adrilahnka lives, and in its life and depth and weight, it helps keep us grounded, and gives the characters a solid stage on which to set themselves against the forces that oppose them.

And what forces they are. I won't spoil it, but you know what, this one is a lot of fun. There's the snowball, the way that Vlad's injecting hoimself into a situation in a relatively minor way just propels him further and further through a chain of consequences until things are, perhaps, a little out of hand. And there's the way that each step in that chain has real stakes, has drama and passion in it, sure, but also consequences, which make sense to all parties. And then there's the way that there's also other stakes, hidden hands pushing thigns around, trying to serve an agenda which Vlad is, at least initially, ignorant of. Quite what's going on and how Vlad ends up in as much trouble as he does, well, you'll have to Read And Find Out. But I will say that this is a fun journey. In a sense it's a tragedy, seeing the younger Vlad again, before life...happened with him. But at the same time, it's a joy, and an absolute firecracker of a story, one I don't hesitate to recommend to all you long term Taltos fans. Brust remains on top form here, and you'll have a lot of fun coming back to Dragaera, and to Vlad.