“The black and white of truth blurred into grey under the relentless assault of an infinity of context, interpretation, perspectives, and opinion.”

I am on a roll with books about books recently, but seriously - if you love reading, read this book. Lawrence paints a vast fantasy world, complete with history, culture, friends, and enemies, and then introduces it to us through the two loveliest characters: Livira and Evar.

Livira is such a fun protagonist - she is full of character and truly cannot abstain from asking questions, even in dangerous situations. Evar is gentle and earnest and I loved him to bits. Their story spanned time and space and it was a joy to follow behind them.

A huge part of this story is the never ending library, and as soon as it was introduced I knew I was going to fall in love with this book. Sentient/atmospheric libraries have to be my favourite fantasy trope, and this one proved the perfect setting for Livira's exploration and her academic training montage, which has to be my second favourite trope so gold stars all round.

Obviously no spoilers, but let me tell you when I reached the twist in this story I had to shut the book and try and think back to how I'd missed it before, it literally felt like the dramatic reveal in Fight Club (again no spoilers haha) I'm not joking.

One aspect of the story contains portals to other places, and I wondered if Lawrence had taken his inspiration from The Magician's Nephew by C.S Lewis or whether it was a coincidence that the idea was so similar, but I loved it either way.

My only issue with this book is not that it was over 500 pages long, but that Book 2 isn't out until April!