Excerpt from The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Chapter 1

Livira

They named Livira after a weed. You couldn't grow much in the Dust but that never stopped hungry people trying. They said livira would grow in places where rocks wouldn't. Which never made sense to Livira because rocks don't grow. Unfortunately, not even goats could eat the stuff and any farmer who watered a crop would find themselves spending most of their time fighting it. Spill a single drop of water in the Dust and, soon enough, strands of livira would come coiling out of the cracked ground for a taste.

Her parents had given her a different name but she hardly remembered it. People called her Livira because, like the weed, you couldn't keep her down.

"Come on then!" Livira picked herself up and wiped the blood from her nose. She raised her fists again. "Come on."

Acmar shook his head, looking embarrassed now that a ring of children had gathered. All of them were dusty but Livira was coated in the stuff, head to foot.

"Come on!" she shouted. She felt woozy and her head rang as if it were the summoning bell and someone kept beating it.

"You're twice her size." Benth broke into the circle and pushed Acmar aside.

"She won't stay down," Acmar complained, rubbing his knuckles.

"It's a draw then." Benth stepped between them, a broad-shouldered boy and handsome despite his broken nose. Seeing Livira's scowl he grabbed her hand and raised it above her head. "Livira wins again."

The others cheered and laughed then broke and ran before the advance of a tall figure, dark against the sun's white glare.

"Livy!" Her aunt's scolding voice. Fingers wrapped her wrist and she was being jerked away towards the black shadow of the family hut.

Aunt Teela shoved a cracked leather bucket at her. "The beans need watering."

"Yessum!" Livira had always loved the well. She spat a bloody mess into the dust then grinned up at her aunt before hurrying off with the bucket. Her aunt shook her head. You could put Livira down but you couldn't keep her there.

Livira's hurrying didn't last long. She slowed as she passed Ella's shack. The old woman collected wind-weed, or rather the kids chased and caught it for her, racing over the hardpan in pursuit of the tough, fibrous balls. The things were almost entirely empty space and Ella's cunning fingers could coax the randomness of their criss-crossed strands into meaning that pleased the eye. Deft twists could render a horse or man suspended in a network of threads within the outer sphere that was itself just a lattice of thicker strands.

Livira watched Ella work. "I wish I could do that."

Ella looked up from her task and held up her current piece on the palm of one wrinkled hand. "For you."

Livira picked it up, a small sphere of wind-weed just five or six inches across.

Immediately Ella took up a replacement and began anew.

Livira studied her unexpected prize. It looked half-finished, the mass of fibres compressed towards the middle seeming like just a clotting of many threads that wove nothing. But as she rotated the ball a shape emerged within it, still vague, like a man approaching through a dust storm, indistinct but definitely there. A young man or maybe a boy. Though if asked how she could tell his age or sex, Livira would have no answer. And it seemed to her that she knew him, or rather that she recognised him.

"I wish I could do that," she said again, cradling the ball in both hands.

"You have other talents, dear." Ella didn't look up from her task. Livira's past efforts with the wind-weed had been comically bad and part of her thanked Ella for not offering false hope that she would get much better.

"Talents?" Livira kicked at the dust. A memory like a steel trap seemed more of a curse than a blessing. A poorer memory, one that ran the dry glare of one day into the next, might stop the time weighing so heavily even on young shoulders. And she was pretty much unbeatable at the game of hollows and stones, but it seemed to make the old men angry rather than pleased. She also understood the odds when the younger men gambled on the game-better than any of them did-but none of them were interested in her advice. "All my skills are useless."

Excerpted from The Book That Wouldn't Burn by Mark Lawrence. Copyright © 2023 by Mark Lawrence. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.