This book was an enjoyable read with an interesting concept. I've not read anything by this author previously so I was intrigued. It is a ya fantasy with well written world building and a plot that was thought out but I am not sure this was my cup of tea. I finished the book and enjoyed it but not sure if I'll be reading the next one. But please read and give it a chance before you decide for yourself.

3.5 stars

The Girl And The Stars begins with an unforgettable first line, that pulled me right into the story ‘many babies have killed, but it is very rare that the victim is not their mother’.

This book, at its essence, is a story of survival, and one that I enjoyed reading, albeit I was a little underwhelmed. As you can see from the opening line, the story begins strongly, yet as it progresses, it strongly reminded me of early 2010s young adult fantasy. This is not necessarily a criticism within itself, but I felt the plot was lacking in new ideas, and the characters echoed so many other books of the same genre.

The writing itself, however, was wonderful, and carried the book through for me. It’s lyrical, often philosophical, and a joy to read.

I’d recommend this book to people getting into the fantasy genre, and I could see it being a favourite for many people.

I struggled so much with deciding on my rating for this one. I did enjoy it but I just didn't love it and it fell short of what i went in expecting.

I absolutely loved the world setting and world building, Mark Lawrence is a beautiful writes and sucked me in right away. The setting alone is what made me like this book as much as I did - a whole world under the ice!! The descriptions were so descriptive too I could just picture everything and I swear I even shivered a few times.
However as the book went on my attention just kept wavering. For about 40ish% it was so fast paced I could not stop reading and then it just started to drag and I I felt like I was now reading just to be finished. It did pick up towards then end and finished off with a good twist but honestly, I do feel this book could have been a little shorter than it was.
It also felt a little more YA than I was expecting. I don't mind YA reads at all but I went into it thinking it was more of an adult fantasy so I did feel a little let down for that reason. It just had so many typical YA tropes.

This was my first Mark Lawrence read and it is very obvious to me that he is a very talented writer - I definitely look forward to reading more of his work, however The girl and the stars didn't quite live up to the expectations I had going in.

"The Girl and the Stars" is my first novel by Mark Lawrence and I had high expectations. Lawrence is a fixture in current fantasy literature and I heard only good things about his work. Maybe I should have started with those earlier works, though, especially the Book of the Ancestor trilogy which apparently sets up the universe "The Girl and the Stars" takes place in. Don't get me wrong, the book definitely stands on its own and sets up this new trilogy perfectly well, but I feel like it would have helped me to get into the world better. The world building is great but very dense, and I often felt like it didn't tell me everything because it expected me to know some things from the previous trilogy. It felt convoluted at times and I don't think I understand all of what was going on even after reading the whole book.
I really enjoy Lawrence's writing and the idea of this underground world, this forgotten city, of an Ancient mysterious people and children ritually sacrificed for what the people of this world consider the greater good is fascinating. I was really into it at first.
But then the book just started to... drag. The pacing is a weird one, with so many things happening while simultaneously nothing happening at all over long stretches of time which made me skip a page or two, admittedly. Another issue I had was, well, the characters. Yaz is, so far, a very typical fantasy heroine that really, really screams YA to me. Honestly, if not for very few brutal and graphic scenes and the very in-depth world building this reads like YA. Not that this is inherently a bad thing, I just didn't expect it from the author. But back to the characters - while the typical heroine, Yaz is also just not that complex and later on she started to annoy me quite a bit with some of the choices she was making. The rest of the cast is... kind of there? I don't feel like any of them are very fleshed out, not even her multiple possible love interests. Pretty sure I won't remember much about them after some time, and thus I simply didn't care that much about their fate.

The ending though, the ending is just amazing. I don't even mean the final fight, which I didn't really care about (mostly because, well, I didn't really care about the characters and because it was way too hectic), but the reveals afterwards and the very last sentence of the book were just. Chef's kiss. I'm not sure this alone will make me actually read the rest of the trilogy, but it's awesome - even though admittedly I cannot fathom how there will be enough interesting content for an entire trilogy.

All in all I'd give this a solid 2,5 stars, rounded down to 2. I liked the potential of certain characters, the generally intriguing world building and the prose, but the lack of characterization, the inconsistent pacing, the weak protagonist and the fact that I was simply bored after a while keep me from giving this a better rating. I'm honestly sorry about that because I wanted to love Lawrence's work just like most people seem to do. It just... didn't make me feel anything.

It took me ages to read this book but it's worth sticking with it. By the very nature of the story the read is claustrophobic and a bit sparse and restrictive. This is necessary though as the tale of the broken and the tainted is that of people trapped underground in darkness or near darkness. Even above ground is a frozen wasteland. Yaz dreams of finding the green oasis that she's heard tales of and seen images of through Erris's thoughts. She battles against the demons and unexpected foes to try and free her brother and her friends. I'm looking forward to continuing Yaz's story in book two. Hopefully it will be a little bit less repetitive.

I loved Mark Lawrences Red Sister trilogy; and cannot recommend it enough. His writing style is just beautiful, and that is very present in this book as well. He has a way of captivating me, drawing me into the most simple scenes as if they were charged epics with ease. It’s like poetry in book form.

This is a book set in the same universe as his other series, but it can be read as a standalone. I got through it so quickly, barely able to put it down – it kept me occupied for most of a weekend and my partner laughed at how much time I spent with my nose thoroughly in the book. There wasn’t a moment, as I’ve found with other ‘standalone’ books that are linked to a series, where I thought ‘oh, but surely new readers won’t understand this at all!’ – just a few, ‘I imagine this will be explained later…’

I found the book fast paced and gripping – it flowed wonderfully and didn’t fail to keep me invested. Interestingly though, I spoke to a family member who hadn’t read the previous series, and she said she was finding it a little slow and heavy going. Now, this could be just different styles and readers; but I can’t help but wonder if, because I’d read the linked series, I jumped straight into the fray a little easier. Because, lovely readers, this book doesn’t have nearly as much exposition. I think you could definitely go into it blind and find a thoroughly enjoyable book, but I think my enjoyment was greatly heightened by the fact I knew what the hell was going on. I understood the ship-hearts, the magic system, the different races and the origin of their people. I understood what was happening in the world – and Mark has said on twitter that people need to read the follow on to understand where this fits with his previous timeline. I know I want to find out.

The leading characters in this book were so strong. They had defined personalities and stood out amongst one another. However, the surrounding characters got a little lost in the mix; unsurprising when there are quite a few to focus on in order to make it feel like an actual community.

I have heard many great reviews of Mark Lawrence and decided it was time to take the plunge.
This is the story of Yaz, one of the Ictha. She lives on a frozen wasteland where only the strongest can survive. She is undertaking a grueling journey with her tribe to meet with other tribes of this frozen land at Black Rock where the Regulator will decide which children can survive such a hard life. Those who cannot are judged to be ‘broken’ and are thrown into the Pit of the Missing, presumably to die and definitely never to be seen again.
Yaz is sure something is wrong with her and convinced she will be thrown into the pit.
That is not exactly what happens but Yaz does end up down the Pit in a world under and within the ice.

The story sounds like another ‘teenage outsider discovers she is special and saves the world’ trope. In a way, it is but also it is not. Yaz does not suddenly discover her ‘talents’ but learns to develop and appreciate abilities she already knew she possessed and her control of these abilities develops organically with her life experience and by understanding how her friends control their abilities rather than her practicing under the tutelage of a ‘master’.
The world and the characters are introduced to us in layers, through the storytelling and every time you turn a corner in the narrative there is something new and interesting but completely consistent with what has gone before.

I enjoyed the world building and was invested in the characters and until the last chapter this was at least a 4 star book but then Aarghhh!!!!

I understand this is a series and the author wants us to continue to book but that ending was not a cliffhanger it was completely unfinished with a ‘What the heck is happening?” element added in the last few pages.
Entirely unnecessary as the story itself is strong enough to draw me to the next book and it led to a dropped star, ironic considering the subject matter.

Rating: 3.5 *
I was gifted a copy of this ebook in exchange for an honest review. Many thanks to Netgalley and HarperCollins UK.
Okay guys this is such a hard review for me to write! It took me 17 days to read this book which, even for me being a slow reader, is a loooong time! I found this book honestly dragged and dragged BUT I wanted to not give up. I wanted to see what happened.
I don’t know if some of the dragging was down to my health, both physical and mental, as I’ve not been feeling great and in a bit of a low spot recently. So I’m trying to be really fair and take account of that in my rating and this review.
So without spoilers, I think I really enjoyed the story and characters, although it took a little while to get my head around the world as it’s so different from anything I’ve read before. It’s set in a world covered in ice and take place above and below the ice and even further down into the earth. I thought it might be almost prehistoric but then it’s made clear it’s set very far into the future and the tribes on top of the ice no little to nothing of the world’s past.
The fact that I continued to read bit after bit at a time can only be a thumbs up for this book - and the ending?! Talk about a cliff “hanger”.
Yes I do want to read the next book to find out what happens. So as you can see, it’s a tough one for me. Dragged and dragged but I had to keep going and do want to read the next book? It’s a good story. Probably well worth a try.

Summary: The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence is a bold fantasy, with unique cultures and mysteries. It suffers somewhat from not letting the characters breathe, and a conclusion cut short.

Recommended if you enjoyed Book of the Ancestor because of the worldbuilding
Not recommended if you don’t like cliffhangers
Recommended if you like coming of age novels in a YA style
Not recommended if you want a rehash of Book of the Ancestor
The Girl and the Stars starts with its only protagonist, Yaz, on the way to be (she assumes) pushed into a giant pit for the good of her clan. You see, Yaz is one of the Ithca, one of many clans that live on the ice covered section of the planet of Abeth (the same setting for Lawrence’s book of the Ancestor series). The clans must be strong, to live in permanent winter y conditions, and any weakness is excised by the regulators, the priests who have some measure of control over the clans by their ability to smelt metals. Yaz knows she is different, weaker than the others of her clan, but has been able to mask it with her ability to draw power from a metaphysical river. She does end up down the pit, with a goal of great personal importance, but she quickly finds out that not everyone who went down the pit is dead – but not everyone who’s alive is unchanged.

Yaz as a character is fine, but does feel a little cliched. She has special powers, her presence is a catalyst for change, she manages to get others to go along with some truly terrible plans, and more than one male figure becomes jealously attracted to her in a short time period. Despite all that, she does go through some interesting questions about what makes up a person’s identity.

It’s difficult to go into too much detail in terms of plot, as much of the book involves Yaz finding out new things about what’s far beneath the ice. Suffice to say there’s other beings down their, and Yaz causes not a small amount of change to how things are. The other characters involved are interesting, but I couldn’t help but feel that very few of them had enough chance to be developed as much as I would have liked. There’s also an almost permanent sense of danger that pervades the plot

The magic system is the same as in the The Book of the Ancestor – characters have abilities that become apparent as they grow up, with some being faster, others larger, and others still being able to control the elements or having the ability to take power from ‘the path’ – a treacherous hidden source of near unlimited power. These powers are less formalised than in the other trilogy, and Yaz sees the path as a river that she can dip her hands into. Returned also is the black ice, and the demons that live inside it – and in people. The further exploration of these things and the hidden technology of the Missing (an ancient race of people who once lived on Abeth). Certain events at the end of The Book of the Ancestor are indirectly given new context by some of these explorations.

Unlike previous books of Lawrence that I have read, this one ends on a cliff-hanger (certain characters are put in a potentially deadly situation). Personally, I’ve come to find cliff-hangers a little distasteful – it feels a little like I’ve been cheated out of an ending, and feels unnecessary too. That being said, I’ve started to dislike cliff-hangers at the ends of chapters too. I’m not sure it’s affected my score (although a great ending can often bump my score up if I’m hovering between two numbers) but it’s worth noting for those that are cliff-hanger averse like me.

As much as I’ve focused on the negatives in this review, I did genuinely enjoy my time with The Girl and the Stars. The setting is fantastic, the characters are strong, if less developed than I would like, and Lawrence has an excellent way with words as always. I would recommend this book to fantasy fans looking for a young protagonist trying to figure out who they are, or those who loved the setting of The Book of the Ancestor and wanted to see more.

Rating: 7.5/10

I absolutely loved this story. This is my first book by this author and it certainly won’t be the last. This is the story of Yaz of the Itcha and what a take it was. Yaz lives on the ice world and ends up jumping into the pit after her younger brother Zeen which leads to the discovery of a world below the ice and a tribe of people called the Broken. Previous children that had been thrown into the pit. This new world is filled with danger, friends, and foe. The Tainted are Broken possessed by demons. Yaz’s mission is to find her brother and stay alive.

The world building is phenomenal and Yaz’s character amazing. I felt like I was among friends reading this book and I didn’t want it to end. Yaz’s abilities to use the stars was so well done and the magic in this world felt so real. With danger, anticipation, and tension on every page, this book took me on a journey that I can’t wait to continue in the next book in the series.

With thanks to Mark Lawrence and HarperCollins UK for an advanced readers copy for this book.

4 1/2 stars bumped to 5.

I'll start this by saying I adore Mark Lawrence, he one of my favourite author discoveries in 2020, I ripped through the Red Sister trilogy in two days, such a good writer with brilliant fleshed out characters. Anyway fan girling over.

The Girl and the Stars follows Yaz a girl from the Ithca tribe, who although with others send their children to be judged by the regulator Kazik on their abilities. If they are found wanting the children will be thrown into the Pit of the Missing (which is considered synonymous with being thrown to your death).

During their judging Yaz's Brother Zeen is thrown in, and before anyone can stop her she jumps right in after him, what they find there isn't death. They find a hidden city built under the ice.

There's bits of actual terror in this book, combined with touching moments and fast adventure. I really want to read this again quite soon (maybe pre-sequel) I feel if I went back I'd get even more out of it.

There's a Hardback copy of this already on route, I'm going to end up with a Lawrence shelf at this rate.

Really Enjoyed this book. The author now seems vomited to creating a shared universe which I really appreciate. What started as sly nods to other books is slowing becoming more obvious. Bring in book two!!

This was good, but definitely not my favourite Mark Lawrence book. I’m a huge fan of the Red Sister series so I went in with high expectations, so that may have been a mistake. However, I did really like the setting and the imagery, I reckon it would need a second read to get a deeper level of understanding with all the different threads going on. It’s definitely well written and there are some amazing lines, but it took me longer to read than I would have liked.

3/5 stars

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

Great book. I loved reading it. Very interesting and covers alot of information

Just wanted to preface this by saying that the cover for this book is absolutely stunning and the audiobook narrator is great.

However, I just don't think that Mark Lawrence's fantasy work is for me. This is the third book I've tried and the same thing has happened with all of them - it hooks me with the first chapter but by the time I'm at around page 100, I just completely lose interest.

I've tried both physically reading this and using the audiobook and the same thing happens no matter which format I use so I just don't think his writing style is for me

Here are a few things you can expect from The Girl and the Stars:

YA;
Stunning prose;
Amazing world building rich in lore and filled with stunning landscapes; and
An imaginative and visual magic system.
On to the full review…

As usual when I have listened to a book through audio I shall start my review with a few comments as to that experience.

This audiobook is narrated by the super talented Helen Duff, I do believe she does most, if not all, of Mark’s books. She has such a lovely voice and, as with the others I have listened to, she is great for even a new listener of audiobooks.

I did knock the speed up of this audio a little but she still sounds great when doing this, she really brings the characters and world to life.

Her voice really reminds me Gemma Arterton, so if you like her voice you will LOVE Helen Duff.

Now, to the book itself…

Firstly, a little praise to the cover of this book, I really like the cover, it is such a lovely and neat cover with such emphasis on the beautiful artwork.

It would appear that Mark is brilliant at writing an absolutely cracking first line of a book! It instantly captivates you has you wondering what world we have just entered.

“Many babies have killed, but it is very rare that the victim is not their mother.”
In this book we follow Yas on her journey both atop the ice and below it, it is all done through her eyes with a single POV. While I did want more from the characters as a whole, Yas was enjoyable to read and showed often that she was loyal to those she cared about and willing to take risks. Yas’ journey is one of survival, in which she has to navigate an entirely new world to find her brother and save him.

“…it’s better to die trying for a life we can take for ourselves than to die fighting each other in the dark for an existence we were condemned to.”
This book doesn’t really stop, I didn’t feel like there was much down time in this book, the characters never stop moving but that is to be expected in a journey such as Yas’ so that isn’t a complaint!

The Girl and the Stars is such a beautifully written book in its entirety, Lawrence builds a stunning world despite the fact that is it essentially a frozen wasteland and really demonstrates the harshness of the environment that our characters are subjected too.

“Now though, with darkness and despair literally reaching out to engulf her, she knew how cruel and fragile a thing hope is, and how sharp the edges of new forged dreams can be once shattered.”
There is so much detail about the world you are in, its traditions and its history both known to its people and some history now lost to them.

“Even so, it held a beauty and a peace: black rock, ice in every shade of pearl between white and clarity, the marbled seams of stardust glowing in all the colours that can be broken from the light.”
This book focuses on themes such as finding ones self and accepting the realities of who you are, it focus’ on friendships and family too, so yanno it has one of my favourite tropes…the found family. I have such a soft spot for groups of unknowns who soon become a tight nit unit together.

I also quite enjoyed the magic of this frozen wasteland, it was really fun and paired with Lawrence’s wonderful prose and worldbuilding it also became a stunning one visually.

“There’s no such thing as magic. If a thing is part of the world, part of how it works, then it’s real and obeys laws just like gravity and electricity do.”
One of my issues – and I say issues loosely because I can’t think of another way to say it – was the young adult nature of this book. I don’t have an issue with YA when I know I’m reading it, and I was of the opinion that this book would be more of an adult fantasy, but it isn’t…in my opinion at least. I would certainly tag this as YA, and no that has absolutely nothing to do with the age of the characters. It was more to do with the storytelling, its narrative if you will, despite being beautifully written it still felt YA through its characters, their interactions and the relationships they develop very quickly and deeply throughout this story.

The Girl and the Stars seems to fall victim to some of the common YA themes also, namely the instalove vibes going on in this book. I think Yas had at least three admirers and I am pretty sure there was definitely the beginnings of a love triangle.

The characters were a little surface level at times, I did enjoy reading them I did also want more, a greater depth to them all. Some more than others.

I really liked Erris, I think he was probably my favourite character and I found myself listening the much more intently when he was present.

I think my “issues” with the characters in this instalment will however be dealt with in book two, the characters have so much more to face and I think it will really bring more out about them.

While this book fell short in some areas it is a good first instalment with a really interesting and creative plot. It is a series I will continue as I am eager to find out what the world has planned for Yas and her companions.

As you are now aware I rate on a buy the hardback, buy the paperback, buy eBook or library rental/wait for a sale scale.

I think this book would fall into the BUY THE PAPERBACK.

This is an enjoyable book, and one in which I will read the next book of the series.
If the eBook was not the same price as the paperback I would probably rate this as a buy the ebook but that’s also because I listened to this via audiobook and really enjoyed the experience. This is a really costly eBook at £7.99. The paperback is actually £0.08 cheaper!

Hello my fellow readers! Okay, so... I AM DEAD OKAY I AM DEAD THIS BOOK WAS EVERYTHING SO AMAZING OMG OMG OMG... okay, okay, *breeeatthheee* we're better now. It took me a little minute, but I think I have collected my mind long enough now to write at least a semi-coherent review. If you didn't guess, I absolutely adored this book. It took me completely by surprise - I knew I liked Mark Lawrence from reading his other books, but I was still unprepared for how brilliant this book was.
Okay, so the world - frankly, although EVERYTHING in the novel is pretty spectacular, the world was probably my favourite part. Okay, disclaimer, I did not really read the synopsis that well so I should have maybe gotten that SPOILER ALERT YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED this book series takes place in the same world as The Book of the Ancestor series, but I didn't, and when I got to chapter 3 or something when this became apparent, I lost my freaking mind END OF SPOILER. It is hard to explain the world without delving into some major spoilers, but I thought it was super interesting with the various clans in the book, and the tough setting of the ice-y plains where they lived.
YAZ IS EVERYTHING and that is all I have to say. I was not sure I was entirely sold on her from the get-go, but then the end of Chapter 3 happened AND I WAS ALL IN. Lawrence just had this incredible way of drawing me deeper and deeper into the world, and learning about things alongside Yaz was honestly amazing. I also really loved that Lawrence never makes cookie-cutter characters that fit into the categories of good and evil, but rather, everyone from Yaz - the protagonist - to the minor characters are all expertly fleshed out - lol, with the exception of Hetta maybe.
Plot-wise, this is my favourite Mark Lawrence book that I have read. The pace literally never slows down, and the more you read, the deeper you get pulled into the story. I actually cannot BELIEVE how obsessed I was with the plot and everything to do with this book.
Overall, an AMAZING novel, I am completely obsessed with it, and if you at all like fantasy novels I URGE you to check Lawrence out because this man does NOT disappoint.
5/5

The Girl and the Stars is a book that I really wanted to love, and yet despite the excellent writing and frankly stunning world building, I found myself strangely unsatisfied when I finally turned the last page. It's worth noting that I have not read the Book of Ancestors trilogy, so I was coming into this spin-off series cold.

Mark Lawrence all but throws you into the action right from the word go here and to begin with I was absolutely hooked by the world and how events quickly spiralled. I fell in love with this cold, harsh world where your usefulness is determined by how well you fit the pattern of your tribe. When Yaz throws herself into the pit after her younger brother however, the world expands further and you discover that nothing is exactly how it seems and there are hidden motives behind everything. At it's heart this is a story of survival and of difference, but it is also a tale of morality and how everything we know to be true can be questioned.

I also need to say that the prose is absolutely beautiful throughout this novel. The world came to life around me, despite not having read the main series this spins off. I really enjoyed the descriptions of life under the ice and the lives of the Missing in how they have adapted to meet the challenges they now face. The prose is at times quietly stark and at other points all but gushing, with a certain amount of philosphising thrown in for good measure. And for about the first half of the book, the prose and world building was enough to carry me along. But then I started to lose interest and it became more of a slog.

The reasons for that lie in two areas; firstly the narrative and secondly, the characters. Taking the narrative first, to begin with this was really tight and action driven. Somewhere around the half way mark though it becomes murky and rather muddled. There is too much going on and not really enough explanation. Instead of being a very individual driven narrative, it opens up into a giant quest against evil narrative and it kind of lost me. It's the kind of plot device I might anticipate from Young Adult fantasy, but I was expecting something more from this and it just didn't deliver. There's a whole lot of mysticism thrown in to make the good vs evil plot device work as well, and again that didn't quite fit with the cold and stark depictions of the underground world.

And then we have the characters. Yaz is probably a perfect young adult heroine, she's bold, driven and has a real fire in her heart. The problem is that she's the only character who is so well developed. The rest of the Missing are really just names and brief flashes of faces. Yaz only has a couple of days to get to know them before she hares off on her frankly suicidal mission to save her brother from the Tainted, and so none of them really felt properly developed. There were a few exceptions, but not really many. And there are a lot of names here as well, so characters just blur into one giant heap after a while. I also found it frankly unbelievable that so many people who Yaz barely knows will join her in her mission, even when she has no real plan and no experience of what she is getting into. It felt... forced somehow.

Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to love here, but there are also some fatal flaws that meant I didn't enjoy the second half of the novel anywhere near as much as I enjoyed the first half. The non-stop action gives you very little time to actually get to know the characters, and so most of the very large cast felt two dimensional and uninspiring. Likewise, I felt the narrative would have been tighter had it focussed on Yaz's primary mission to save her brother, rather than blowing up into a fight against two forms of evil; one solid and very present, the other a more shadowy evil hiding somewhere in the darkness. That would also have allowed more time to be spent building up the characters who would follow Yaz on this dangerous and rather poorly planned mission.

Having read a few other reviews, it appears that this novel is a departure in style from the initial series set in this world which was more character driven. If Red Sister also displays the exceptional world-building and prose as this novel manages, then it should be right up my street.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for my advance review copy of this novel.

In the ice, east of the Black Rock, there is a hole into which broken children are thrown. On Abeth the vastness of the ice holds no room for individuals. Survival together is barely possible. No one survives alone. With the current state of the world, finding new and exciting fantasy realms to retreat into is nothing short of a treat. It's a book to inhale.

This was a book that was difficult to put down! The characters were superb and story just kept you guessing right up until the last page. 10/10 would recommend.