Overue by Mark Lawrence Series: The Library Trilogy #1.5
on June 27, 2023
Genres: Fantasy
Pages: 46
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
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This is a 12,000 word short story featuring Yute and Wentworth from THE BOOK THAT WOULDN'T BURN.
It can be read as a standalone or between books 1 and 2 of The Library Trilogy.
Yute and Wentworth investigate a strange connection between several bookshops.
Overdue is a novella set in the world of the The Book that Wouldn’t Burn and part of The Library Trilogy. It is an interesting story on how some books completely change us and transcend even time, sometimes though not in the right order as time is tricky like that. While you can read Overdue and not spoil anything, I don’t think it will have the same impact if you don’t know who Yute is and how the Library itself works.
Cats are strange creatures and Wentworth is stranger than most. While he might look like a big coon cat that just likes to lay in the sun, he seems to get around and is one of those special creatures that can find books lost from the Library.
We’re following Wobble?” Nicholas hurries to catch up. “I mean he is a lovely boy, but there’s nothing between his ears escept more fluff…”
Yute tilted his head. “He had a remarkable talent for getting from here to there. Even from now to then.”
Yute is on a mission and keeps showing up at a book shop, just the when of that book shop has changed. It is hard to tell in the time line if Marie or Cole came first. But in one time Marie runs the shop talking to a dead sister long gone and cut off from the world. There is a cat in the shop that looks very familiar to readers of the The Book that Wouldn’t Burn. Always fed and sometimes disappearing for days, he is the only company she has. Cole works in the same bookshop or at least a similar one in a different time. He too is isolated and mostly alone except for one repeat customer. He wrote a book no one would publish, put his heart and sole in it and hoped that it would someday touch anyone. Sometimes when you hope big enough and dream long enough a special cat and the magic of the Library will help you out.
I enjoyed this short story a lot. Yute’s ability to maneuver through time with the help of our special cat friend Wobwellington, Third Duke of Catborough or a Shadow Dog is always interesting. I really enjoy that you can’t tell for sure if which time is really first in the circle. You would think it was Marie’s in what seems like this modern world. But could it be Cole’s even though the technology is reduced it seems like his time might be in the future after some event. Or are they concurrent just on different space time lines? I enjoy quandaries like this in books and so the The Book that Wouldn’t Burn was a lot of fun for me in that regard.
This was a very interesting short story and I like how it explores the magic of books. It is an interesting tale with Yute and a few of the animal friends of the library who are always fun to see.
To sell a book I need to match a text to a type and arrange a happy marriage, or torrid affair, or merely a debauched weekend, but whichever it is it needs to be a discovery, something that would not have happened without my intervention. That, my dear Miss Pency, is how books are sold rather than merely purchased.
About Mark Lawrence
Mark Lawrence was born in Champagne-Urbana, Illinois, to British parents but moved to the UK at the age of one. He went back to the US after taking a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College to work on a variety of research projects including the ‘Star Wars’ missile defence programme. Returning to the UK, he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. He says he never had any ambition to be a writer so was very surprised when a half-hearted attempt to find an agent turned into a global publishing deal overnight.
Mark Lawrence is married with four children, one of whom is severely disabled. His day job is as a research scientist focused on various rather intractable problems in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. At one point he was qualified to say ‘this isn’t rocket science … oh wait, it actually is’.
Between work and caring for his disabled child, Mark spends his time writing, playing computer games, tending an allotment, brewing beer, and avoiding DIY.
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Love the crow on the cover! 😀
Very Edgar Allen Poe
Oh how did I miss this new series from a fave dark fantasy author of mine. I will definitely check out the novella and the series. Thanks
Debbie I think you are going to like it. Maybe a little less gruesome than his other works but a really solid start to a new series.
Fun!
I was scrolling through your posts and came across this cover. I had to check it out and it sounds like it packs a lot into a novella. I find a shorter book more of a challenge for the author and, I too, reward them for a job well done.
Yes a novella is more difficult to tell an entire story in. But this was a well done side story.
I really want to read this author and I love that this story was so well done. I hope to get to it someday.