The Book That Wouldn't Burn

“People called her Livira because, like the weed, you couldn’t keep her down.”

This quote captures the essence of Livira. Like the weed she was named after, the girl has the ability to thrive in conditions that would defeat most others. In the beginning of the narrative, this trait manifests in her decision to stand up to a bigger boy in her community, but her determination will soon help her to survive the library and the Crath City politics that seek to disenfranchise her and those like her.

“The books they were lost with in the Mechanism had tutored them, left them with skills honed to the sharpest possible edge. Clovis the warrior, Kerrol with access to the levers of the mind, Mayland with his histories. Evar had emerged with nothing, just the sense that something had been torn from his memory, leaving a chasm so wide he could fall into it and never be found.”

The contrast between Evar and his siblings shows his sense of inadequacy when he compares himself to them. The other canith siblings have emerged from the Mechanism with tangible skills, but Evar has ostensibly gained nothing except a yearning to find the woman from the book, who is later revealed to be Livira. This longing fundamentally drives his character arc throughout the story and is representative of the struggle to find meaning amidst limitations.

“It had never been her aunt’s expectations, or the sabbers’ rope, or the unvoiced threat of the soldiers that had imprisoned her. It had been the fact that she was lost—she’d been lost her whole life, bound to the one point that she understood. And now? Ignorance still held her captive.”

Livira’s character arc focuses on her journey from ignorance to true understanding. Her upbringing in an isolated village in the Dust has left her unprepared for the wider world, but now that she has come to Crath City, she must face the reality of her ignorance and find a way to remedy it.