The Book That Wouldn’t Burn by Mark Lawrence

A boy has lived his whole life trapped within a vast library, older than empires and larger than cities.

A girl has spent hers in a tiny settlement out on the Dust where nightmares stalk and no one goes.

The world has never even noticed them. That's about to change.

Their stories spiral around each other, across worlds and time. This is a tale of truth and lies and hearts, and the blurring of one into another. A journey on which knowledge erodes certainty, and on which, though the pen may be mightier than the sword, blood will be spilled and cities burned.

A book that is at its core YA even if it's not marketed as such (perhaps because of the swearing?). It certainly satisfied my library fetish, and its setting is its greatest pleasure. The author is skillful in his twists and turns and reveals, done in a satisfying way. I also liked the blurring and suggestive fantasy-that's-actually-sf setting, always clever. However, the tinge of ‘young people rise about their oppressive cultural system' is getting kind of old for me, although the book picks up a bit away from that, it did weaken it for me. That, and -warning- the book ends on, if not a cliffhanger, certainly a suspended note - reminding you that this is a 3-book series with more to come that you have to buy. Or not.

Excited to read something else

I’ve yet to be disappointed by anything Mark Lawrence puts out and this is no exception. At times the pace was a little slow and it took a bit for everything to really get rolling, but when the action started, it really didn’t let up. Feels like a book that’ll really benefit from a re-read to pick up on any foreshadowing that was missed too. I am so intrigued by this world and this story and truly I have no concept of where it’s going to go from here, but I’m ready for the ride.

That... was very different.
So basically we have a huge library. One so big it contains the cumulative knowledge of multiple millennia, different cultures. Different species. The whole thing runs on magic and a select group of librarians trying to discover the endless secrets of it.
And that's pretty much about as much as I can say without spoiling it. Why? Because this thing does incredible stuff with time travel, with how we think about knowledge and history.

The central characters are Livira and Evar, a girl and a boy who are destined to meet each other. They share the library and yet they have never talked to each other and they shouldn't, because something about them sets off events that are going to break time and space and essentially, everything.
And man, did the story go in ways I didn't see. It expertly plays with the idea that you can interpret certain things in contradicting ways and so the twists are some of the best I have ever seen. They are not just shocking; they completely change how you see previous events.
You know how clever authors are needed to write clever characters? Mark Lawrence does that perfectly; his concepts are stellar and unique and his prose is fantastic. No, it's not the flowery stuff that has no meat. He carefully picked his words to support the story perfectly. It's not bullshit (I'm looking at you, Rothfuss).

A warning; I am convinced this series will end in a tragic way. The story is just too big, the ideas are not for this to have a clear, happy ending. But so far this is 100% worth a read.