The Library of Broken Worlds

Alaya Dawn Johnson

• Publisher: Magpie
• Year: 2023
• eBook ISBN:
  9780008612375
• Topic: Literature
• Index: Literature

A girl matches wits with a war god in this kaleidoscopic, epic tale of oppression and the cost of peace, where stories hide within other stories, and narrative has the power to heal… or to burn everything in its path.

In the winding underground tunnels of the Library, the great celestial peacekeeper of the three systems, a terrible secret lies buried.

As the daughter of a Library god, Freida has spent her whole life exploring the Library's ever-changing tunnels and communing with the gods. Her unparalleled access makes her unique – and dangerous.

When Freida meets Joshua, a mortal boy desperate to save his people, and Nergüi, a Disciple from a persecuted religious minority, Freida is compelled to break ranks with the gods and help them. But in order to do so, she will have to venture deeper into the Library than she has ever known. There she will discover the atrocities of the past, the truth of her origins, and the impossibility of her future…

With the world at the brink of war, Freida embarks on a journey to fulfill her destiny, one that pits her against an ancient war god. Her mission is straightforward: Destroy the god before he can rain hellfire upon thousands of innocent lives – if he doesn't destroy her first.

A sparkling, thought-provoking new offering from World Fantasy Award-winning author Alaya Dawn Johnson.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• Tesseracts and Material Gods of The Library of Broken Worlds
• –I was born in the Library.
• –Awilu ballads begin with a call and end with a sacrifice. I call this the ballad of Joshua, lost to me.
• –I fell in love in the mud, but I destroyed it in the dust.
• –To understand Nergüi, you have to understand two things: her stories and her souls.
• –There’s a kind of story called a portal story. The stories where you leave your home and your life and your old rules, and you enter another world. I was from the Library; to me it was home. But to Nergüi it was a strange, dangerous place–it was Narnia, and Oz, and the Great Bathhouse, and the Demon Lands, and the Upside-Down City. And I was its most dangerous, impossible resident.
• –Once I decided to look, the Library opened itself up to me, as though it had longed for someone who would rip off the dirty bandage and expose its oldest wound.
• –As ze lived. Radically, with love.
• –Let’s imagine a boy.
• –In the end, Quinn himself showed me the path to the center of my glass.
• –The dead are alive in the desert that surrounds the Library, while the living are just one breath away from the edge, that vastness salted with stars.
• –This is the secret of our lighted paths: If you follow them well, they will always lead you back to no escape.
• –I came to kill you.
• Author’s Note
• Acknowledgments
• Also by Alaya Dawn Johnson
• About the Publisher