Reviews with content warning for Violence - The Book That Wouldn't Burn

Reviews tagging 'Violence'

The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence

37 reviews

beckyyreadss's review against another edition

adventurous emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

I wanted to read this book because I’m always up for discovering new authors, whilst browsing in Waterstones, this book caught my eye due to how pretty the cover was. I’m so glad that I did pick this book mainly for the cover because I fell in love with this book.

All books, no matter their binding, will fall to dust. The stories they carry may last longer. They might outlive the paper, the library, even the language in which they were first written. But the greatest story can reach the stars. The first point of view is Evar, and he has lived his entire life trapped within a vast library, that is older than empires and larger than cities. The second point of view is Livira and she has spent her life in a tiny settlement out on the Dust where no goes and nightmares stalk. The world has never noticed them. That is all about to change.

The way that I personally review a fantasy book is how easy it is to get into the book and how the world building is and if I get so confused that I lose the plot of the story during the book. I didn’t get confused once. I was hooked from page one. Like literally page one. This is one of the books where I wanted to dive headfirst into the book and into this world. Mark Lawrence’s writing in his book is beautiful, it was like one minute I started the book and the next it was over, and I didn’t want it to be. I love the love story between our two MCs, I think it was so adorable and innocent and with the year jumped, you were breaking my heart, and I was rooting for them to be reunited. The story was so unique, and it was so interesting, I just stay in that world forever. But both characters have their own character development and their own story within the book with their own problems and their own family and friends.

The twists and turns had me audible gasping and just wanting more. This book was 560 pages and if it was 1000 pages, I think I would still want more – I did want more, I pre-ordered the second one almost instantly. The ending had me on the edge of my seat and all I wanted was the answers we had been looking for, we thought we found them earlier, but then we didn’t, and it was just back and forth.

It’s one of those books where if I say one thing specific like, even though I loved it, it could spoil the whole thing. But I would recommend this book to anyone especially people who like fantasy and science fiction and books about books.

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xchloe_bxx's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious tense medium-paced

4.25

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clovetra's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

this book was a TRIP. at some points it was enjoyable, but a lot more often than not with this book it made almost zero sense.

this book’s worldbuilding and characters really sucked me in to begin with. the world of crath, alongside livira as an incredibly likeable protagonist really worked. evar’s world also sucked me in, but i will say compared to livira, he was quite boring as a character. he lacked deep characterisation, and alongside someone as spunky as livira his chapters fell flat.

i think this book’s biggest downfall is although its almost 600 pages, it feels like it barely touches on the world of the story, and instead focuses on characters, which is all find and dandy if your worldbuilding is up to par. this book jumped steps 1, 2 &3 and immediately ran to step 4 regarding its world. like even in the first chapter the dust isn’t properly explained, and you kind of just have to piece together what’s going on. like sabbers - are they human? we’re told at some points, yes…. then no…. then like 70% into the book a nonhuman description is given…. but then yes they’re human. it felt like a battle between each concept as it would be explained one way, and then expanded on when the foundation wasn’t properly explored.

also the amount of plot twists…. im a girl who loves plot twists, even if i predict them. what i don’t love is that this book is so complex and fails to fully explain the rules of its world that the plot twists literally don’t make sense, or feel like they’ve just been added for shock value. like once we got to jumping portals within portals and assistants and travelling back and forth…. after a while everything was twisting in on itself too much and seemed to be breaking the laws of this world’s universe i had no idea what was happening. this was probably the most egregious in the last 20% of the book. before that, i could reasonably understand what was going on. but in the last 100 pages or so i think this book really lost the plot… literally.

and the ending too….. i don’t even know what happened. like i do…. but gun to my head i couldn’t *explain* it.

i really had fun reading this in the first half, but after that point i think too much was happening at once, it didn’t let me sit & digest what i was reading before another plot point that wasn’t fully fleshed out was introduced.

this sounds like such a mean review but i actually did enjoy myself reading this! before the halfway mark i was sure this would be a 4-star for me. but idk the way the second half of the book was….. not a fan 🙁

at this point im not even too sure if i’d want to finish this series. in one way im so attached to my girl livira i want to know what happened to her, but honestly i cant say i want to subject myself to another 600 pages of poor worldbuilding.

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bookforthought's review against another edition

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challenging mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Beautifully written and developed marvellously, this is an original and intriguing book which defies genre labels (primarily mixing sci-fi and fantasy) and challenges beliefs and preconceptions. I was very confused at times, but losing myself in this story was nonetheless a beautiful experience. That ending is brutal though - I’ll need to pick the next book up soon!

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pidgepodge's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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skylarkblue1's review against another edition

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slow-paced

2.0

I'll be honest I don't have much to say because I don't really remember much that happened/I honestly don't really think much happened?

This book was so very long, and so very slow and dry. I thought I was enjoying it still though because, well, I kept reading, but after needing to renew it twice at the library and the finale kinda just being.. nothing big I realised that I just don't really care for this aha..

The characters were ok, the world was quite neat as well. The writing though I think just really didn't mesh well with me. I also have no idea what the title is referring to considering what the ending is lol. I think this book really could have been so much shorter and like nothing would have been lost. We don't need super long books, this is a pretty big issue with a lot of the long books I've read, they just seem really padded and not well edited.

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georgiatheperson's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious reflective

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Definitely my favourite book now! I loved it, it's a good book that gets you to stop and just think. Exceptionally written as well! Although I'm not the best person to ask about that. haha

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xvicesx's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

It's an excellent bit of mind f*ck, as any Mark Lawrence book always is, but I didn't find myself drawn to it as I would normally expect to be.

I think I'll need to read the second book to make up my mind about the series.

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aseel_reads's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

What a meta read this was. A really well done time loop/travel story. All the little reveals had me gasping aloud and I feel immense sadness for our main characters. I also liked the little tidbits of our world reflected in the library and just the whole "whose the real enemy" thought experiment

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kmedusa's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

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