A review by clovetra
The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence

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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