Two people living in a world connected by an immense and mysterious library must fight for those they love in the second book in a new trilogy from the international bestselling author of The Book That Wouldn’t Burn. The Library spans worlds and times. It touches and joins distant places. It is memory and future. And amid its vastness Evar Eventari both found, and lost, Livira Page. Evar has been forced to flee the library, driven before an implacable foe. Livira, trapped in a ghost world, has to recover the book she wrote—one which is the only true threat to the library’s existence—if she's to return to her life. While Evar's journey leads him outside into a world he's never seen, Livira's path will taker her deep inside her own writing, where she must wrestle with her stories in order to reclaim the volume in which they were written.  The secret war that defines the library has chosen its champions and set them on the board. The time has come when they must fight for what they believe, or lose everything. "Lawrence makes the intertwining stories fascinating and propulsive, with enough scattered clues and shocking twists to keep the pages flying. This will keep readers up long past their bedtime." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "This is a wonderfully immersive fantasy whose meta message, about the power of books to change the world, is not to be missed." - Library Journal "Mark Lawrence strikes the perfect balance between intellect and heart in this second volume of his Library Trilogy." - Grimdark Magazine "This is Lawrence at this best....absolutely brilliant book, go, read." - SFF Reviews Praise for The Book That Wouldn't Burn : “The most tightly plotted novel I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading…it’s truly magnificent.” – BookRiot “This tale of knowledge and its cost flies by thanks to the gripping mystery and beautiful worldbuilding...Readers will be desperate for more.” – Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Gripping, earnest, and impeccably plotted." – Kirkus (starred review) "A fantastic setting, a feisty heroine, and hints of a deeper mystery that calls to mind the depths of Frank Herbert's Dune and its intertwined cultural and religious issues." – Library Journal "Reading Mark Lawrence's latest novel, The Book that Wouldn't Burn, feels like having your mind blown in slow motion." - Grimdark Magazine Mark Lawrence was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. After earning a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College London, he went back to the US to work on a variety of research projects, including the “Star Wars” missile-defense program. Since returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He never had any ambition to be a writer, so he was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight. His first trilogy, The Broken Empire, has been universally acclaimed as a groundbreaking work of fantasy, and both Emperor of Thorns and The Liar’s Key have won the David Gemmell Legend Award for best fantasy novel. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol. The greater tragedy of our world is not the victims of cruelty, but that so many of those victims would, given the opportunity, stand in the shoes of their oppressors and wield the same whip with equal enthusiasm. Excavating Crath, by Anthony Robinson Chapter 1 Celcha Being able to see the walls of your prison is a luxury that few are afforded. Make no mistake though: every one of us is trapped. This was the slaver's wisdom, and he was given to sharing it. The palisade around the Arthran dig site had seen better days and had probably been unimpressive on the day it was finished, but its presence, Myles Carstar maintained, allowed a concrete focus for the restless dissatisfaction that would otherwise turn inwards and chew away at a person, or even an animal, from the inside. Celcha wondered whether the slaver should in fact be called a slaver since it was other sabbers who went about the world hunting people down and bringing them from the wilds in chains. Whereas Myles Carstar simply set them to their tasks and enforced the law. Celcha's brother, who had an unhealthy interest in words, claimed that you could be a slaver simply by owning slaves-the business of riding them down and beating the fight out of them with iron-rod staves was not a necessary qualification. And in any case, Myles Carstar did more than handing out duties and assigning the official cruelties-he also made slaves of those new arrivals who rather than entering the dig site by the gates, wailing behind the trackers' horses, came the second way, also wailing. The second route onto Arthran Plateau, the one Celcha and her brother had taken, was by far the shorter journey. It still took the best part of a year, though, before the newest slave was dragged out from between th