I enjoyed this book, as I've enjoyed all the other books by Mark Lawrence books I've read. This is a very violent bloody story with detailed and intricate world development and a pretty big cast of characters. This authors writing is so vivd and dramatic, intensely lyrical. which I immensely. Overall I would highly recommend.
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In this story we're following Nona, Clera, Hesse, Ara (and the other Red Sisters. This is certainly more of a coming of age story, something that Lawrence hasn't done so much of previously, and yet I think it worked out really well. Nona is the main character of the friends, but as the story goes on we end up following all of them on their quest to become part of the Red Sisters, a holy order who are trained in all sorts of skills including diplomacy, magic and fighting...

What I really loved was the way that this unfolded into a story about trust, friendship, betrayal and power. The plot is something I could definitely enjoy, and although I found a few sections a little predictable, that didn't take away from my enjoyment becuase it was such a solidly fun book throughout.

I also really like the blade path and the magic that is described in this world as it seems totally bad-ass and very exciting. It kind of reminded me or a warrior trail and it was just inspiring to imagine the girls competing along the magic path and battling to control the power.

Overall this was a solid 4* read and I found it a very enjoyable one. It is grimdark so there are some more sinister and torturous moments, but I loved how it was all handled and I ended up really enjoying the whole book

This book was something I had to be in the right mood to read because you need to be able to fully immerse yourself into this beautiful and challenging read.

The world building was unparalleled, this book introduces the reader to several of the different factions/tribes/academies in the world and gives us a basic understanding of what they stand for, without feeling like an info dump. No doubt they're going to be featuring more heavily in the future installments so I already recommend reading them in order! The magic in this world is very original and follows a well thought out set of rules.

In this world, there are four magical bloodlines which can still be found in certain individuals. Each bloodline has its own power and qualities, which are highly valued in warriors and academics - which is why our hero, Nona, a little girl who has been sold by her village to the Child Collector, is picked up by a Convent and trained to use her abilities.

At this point, I felt there were some very slight and sweet similarities to the Harry Potter series - four different groups, magic and poisoning lessons and a bunch of teenagers who resolutely refuse to tell the teachers when they're ill or in danger and just take matters into their own hands. I only noticed the parallel because of the last point, which I always found funny in the Harry Potter series (FFS, just tell the supremely powerful headmaster/mistress).

Nona is an excellent main character, having been sold by her village and generally abused by everyone around her, she's not a trusting child and plays her cards very close to her chest which makes her an unreliable narrator, but one you can sympathise with. She's not all butterflies and light, which makes for one of my favourite tropes - homicidal little girls.

The writing was totally immersive and the action bloody and violent (woohoo!) - I don't feel like I can really do this book justice, it kept me hooked from beginning to end once I knew I was ready to throw myself into it.

At the Convent of Sweet Mercy young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. But the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand the trouble the eight year old Nona Grey brings with her. Despite the security and isolation of the convent her secret and violent past will find her out. Beneath a dying sun that shines upon a crumbling empire, Nona Grey must come to terms with her demons and learn to become a deadly assassin if she is to survive…



Red Sister is set on a new world of Abeth where there's only a small strip of land around the equator that isn't covered in ice. Lawrence wonderfully sets up the world in Red Sister as the start of his new trilogy of fantasy books. I'm so intrigued about so many different things within this world. I want to learn more about the people who live on the ice. I kind of want to learn about how the world ended up only as a strip of habitable land. Plus I just really want to know more about the characters.

One of the amazing things about this book is that all of the main characters are strong female characters. We spend most of the book at Sweet Mercy convent and in this series, Nuns are badass. They are tough, independent and most of all fleshed out properly. Each character has their own attributes and personalities and they are not all templates of a YA sword wielding female.  As far as a I know this is Lawrence's first book with a female MC and I think he's really written Nona and the other sisters really well without falling into cliches.



My one issue is the slow pace of most of the book. As I mentioned above, most of the book we're at Sweet Mercy convent. This means the majority of the book is watching Nona being trained. This meant up until near the end it was very slow to read, and the book felt much longer than it actually was. But it is a really good set up for the rest of the series as the world and characters have been built up so extensively throughout the training.

I loved the magic system in this world and can't wait to see more of it. The 'Path' and how it's used is really interesting to read about from Nona's perspective, and also the other sisters who use it and use it differently. I'm really intrigued into how much more learning there is to come in Grey Sister about this. Along with this, I want to learn more about the shiphearts that are buried and how these are connected with the magic in this world.

One of my main positives for this book is that it is not a 'Chosen One' story. It's really pushed by the characters in the book that prophecy's aren't real, and that the faith in prophecy's is usually what causes them to become true. It's also emphasised that it's not always who you expect to be the chosen one, and there's a lot of political intrigue and manipulation around this. Sister Glass in particular is of interest as we're not really sure what she has to gain or lose and why she's playing the game the way she is.

Positives

+ Wonderfully vivid world building

+ Loved the magic system

+ Not a 'chosen one' story

+ Strong mostly female characters

Negatives

- Slow pace



Overall, I am really excited to read Grey Sister the next in the series! I received Red Sister* by Mark Lawrence from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an unbiased and honest review.

At the beginning I couldn't really get into the novel because the writing seemed odd, but after the first fifty pages or so this book became better and better and the writing really grew on me as well.

Nona is a great protagonist, naive in some things, cold and calculating in others. The supporting characters are interesting as well and the plot is complex, layered and just sucks you right in.

The framing narrative teases what's to come without spoiling any of the plot developments and the only reason I gave this book four instead of five stars is that I hope that the second part in the series will be even better.

What can I say. A great world which is horrific from the start with violence, murder and a little bit of magic to keep you involved.
The only let down was the ending which felt a little bit rushed leaving it open for the second novel.

I have read both of Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire and Red Queen’s War trilogies and appreciated how he tended to write atypical main protagonists. So from a psychopath to a womanising coward, Lawrence surprises again - this time with a young girl being trained into a killer in a convent of badass nuns with kickass abilities.

Red Sister was ultimately a coming-of-age story, not something that I’ve expected from this author, and especially not one which dealt so deftly and realistically in the intricacies of young female interactions in a confined, isolated and competitive environment. Similar to the aforementioned series, Red Sister focused on a singular POV, predominantly third person with smattering of first person for flashback scenes. For over 90% of the book, the main protagonist, Nona, was between 9 and 12 years old. Notwithstanding, the tone of the book was not even close to being YA and there were times when I found myself wondering how mature Nona appeared to be.

The book was centred on character development with some really intense scenes, albeit not all of them were action-based. The trope of a special child being trained in a school for not-so-ordinary children is one of my favourites, if it is well-written. In this case, it definitely fit the bill. Almost all the characters were properly fleshed out and while I may not like all of them, I did understand their thoughts, motivations and resultant actions. The most prominent themes dealt with were friendship and loyalty, and of course, it's ugly flipside, betrayal.

The prose was quintessentially Mark Lawrence – flowing, beautiful, philosophical and sometimes a bit confusingly so. The pacing did feel a bit uneven though. Part One ended with a scene which was so intense that it made me breathless. Then Part Two seemed to start the process of a slow build-up again to the climax, which was also good but in my opinion, not as amazing as the earlier one. Or maybe it just felt slow after the greatness at the end of Part One.

The worldbuilding was fascinatingly different from what fans would have seen from his earlier series. Notwithstanding, and this is purely my own assumption, it appeared that the author had yet again drawn on Earth’s potential premised on its distant past or a conjecture of its far future as the basis of this new world in the Book of the Ancestor.

All in all, it is a really good beginning of a new exciting trilogy.

I was really looking forward to Red Sister. For one, I judge books by their covers, and the cover of this book felt inspiring. I wanted to know the story of the girl on the cover. Further, the convent of the setting really excited me, with the promise of lots of women living in close quarters, and together with them fantasy world and the fact that the nuns in the convent are not normal nuns, but murderous nuns, I could not wait.

Unfortunately, these various aspects just didn't slot in properly for me and Red Sister fell flat from pretty much the first chapter (I'll excuse the prologue from this, because with an opening sentence of "It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent, Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men" it was definitely not boring. It's a shame that the rest of the book didn't feel this inspiring. The first third follows a young girl Nona as she is rescued from being executed for murder by a nun, Abbess Glass, and taken to the Sweet Mercy Convent. At the point of DNF-ing, Nona had been at the convent for only one day, but it felt like I had been reading for months. We went to various classes with Nona, heard her telling other girls her life story various times, meeting other girls, but it all blurred together into something vague and foggy that I couldn't figure out. As I was reading these scenes, I kept finding myself wondering what the point of them were. Was there a meaning to the conversation? Why is this character important? But as various scenes came and went without any apparent plot, I just lost interest. 

I could have kept going with the weak plot if the characters had grasped my attention, but they also fell flat in my opinion. Nona was interesting in terms of her story, and there were moments where my interest was piqued, such as a moment where she challenges a nun in a lesson, but generally she just felt like an empty space and didn't bring much to the scene. To be honest, there were complete passages where I was completely unaware of what Nona was doing, what she was thinking, or even that she was there - which is surely not what is supposed to happen with the protagonist. The other characters, the nuns and the other novices were bland and one-dimensional, and they all felt like the initial ideas behind really good characters, but they just didn't feel alive on the page. 

This book had so much potential and I wish that I could have enjoyed it. I wanted the magic, the characters, and the setting to come to life, I wanted to be excited about nuns trained in the martial arts, but it just did not happen. The writing was not bad, rather, sometimes it was beautiful, but the story just felt dull on the page. I couldn't make myself care about the characters or their story. Perhaps if I kept going, I would have found something to enjoy, but in my opinion, I had simply read enough of the book without encountering what it was I was looking for.

First, I think it's important to note that this book is not in any way linked to Lawrence's previous series. His titles may suggest otherwise, but you're safe to read this without having picked up any of his prior works!

The action takes place in the harsh, ice covered world of Abeth. Harsh weather has completely taken hold of most of the globe & for thousands of years humanity has forced to adapt to life on a narrow strip of land. I believe a world map would've been beneficial here, but because Lawrence subtly introduced elements of history & geography throughout the story, we end up with a pretty detailed understanding of the world.

Red Sister is mainly written in Third Person perspective, though sometimes it switches to First Person in order to allow the reader to empathize with the main character, Nona, during her flashbacks. Personally, I usually prefer my stories to be written in Third Person, but Lawrence was really able to make use of the First Person Perspective.

I’ve heard some mixed opinions of Lawrence’s prose, which was actually one of the reasons I hadn’t yet picked up any of his books at the time I read this. It seems like it draws a fair numbers of both haters & lovers. Thankfully I fell into the category of those who adore his writing style. I thought it was beautifully written, and I respected the fact that he made writing decisions that weren’t safe. He played with language and had fun with it.

When it comes down to it, the main themes of the book focused more on friendship, trust and faith more than anything else. It employs the use of the Magic School trope that bring us all back to our Harry Potter days, and I think it will be a solid read for many fantasy lovers.

What's not to like about a Mark Lawrence novel? Lawrence produces a remarkable world of classes, violence, and...nuns. By taking the concept of claiming there to be power in blood, the story takes you on an adventure eerily similar to your typical school setting with his own twist of surprises.

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started reading this book. I wasn’t a fan of Lawrence’s ‘Broken Empire’ series, I couldn’t get into the mindset of the protagonist at all. I wasn’t even going to pick up this book initially, but reviews from friends lavished it in praise and I put in a review request, and then, assuming said request had been rejected, bought a copy. A copy arrived in my inbox just as another dropped on my doorstep and, I thought, well, this book and I were just meant to be together.

This book starts with an epilogue of sorts, but I won’t say too much about it, because to do so would be to ruin other parts of the story. The first entree into Nona’s story proper isn’t even through her own eyes, it’s through the eyes of a friend who’s viewing what little is left of their dwindling life from the wooden boards below a noose. Needless to say, the book opens with Nona having been sentenced to death for a crime unknown, and escaping the noose only through the good graces of the Abbess of the Convent of Sweet Mercy.

What follows after is my favourite sort of book. I am a complete sap for schools of magic and violence, all of my favourite books have some kind of place of learning in them. The beauty of this book is that it manages to stay ‘external’ whilst focusing inwards. We learn the stories of Nona’s early life and the history and politics of the world around her. It’s all told in great detail but I never once felt as if the information was simply being dumped upon me.

One thing I have always appreciated about Lawrence’s books is the genre that they lie in. A sort of post-apocalyptic fantasy. In Nona’s world, they are living on a planet watched over by a dying sun, where the feeble light grants them only a narrow corridor of living space between the ice. Moreso, they people of Abeth are not even from that world, having arrived on the planet many hundreds of years ago aboard great ships. I love the interplay between the fantasy and science fiction aspects of the book, how the magic seems to be amplified by the ‘shiphearts’ or reactor cores of the ancient space ships.

Nona, herself, is a wonderful character. She’s courageous and frightened, naive and world weary, stubborn and tentative. Basically, in all aspects, she is a young girl coming of age, a young girl thrust into a dark and unpleasant world and forced to come to terms with it. One of my favourite books when I was growing up was ‘Lirael’ by Garth Nix for many of the same reasons that I’ve come to love this book. We have a curious and introverted protagonist carving herself a niche in an environment that is both fascinating and dangerous. A young girl who has managed to utterly unbalance the world around her just by her existence. The way that Nona is written, and her feuds and friendships with those around her, is just amazing. I had flu for the last couple of days and just being able to curl up with this book was perfect escapism.

This is book filled with shadow, poison and politics. It’s a slow, rich, dark odyssey that, even after almost 500 pages, I felt sad to finish. ‘Grey Sister’, the second book, is due to be published next spring and, honestly, I can see myself reading this a good few times between.

So if you like complicated and truthful heroines, blood and bladework with a hefty dose of darkness then this is definitely a book you should have on your radar and your ‘to be read’ list.

Many many thanks to Harper Voyager for a copy in return for an honest review. What a book!

Firstly many thanks to negalley for an ARC of this book in return for honest feedback.

Where to start..... This is the first book I have read by this author but it definitely wont be my last! I thoroughly enjoyed this book and could not put it down! It is full of magic, wonder, intrigue, thrills, horror, friendship, betrayal, horror and love - a powerful combination.

The story centres around Nona, a fiery young girl who is sold into the convent and is set on a path to become a red sister. We follow her development (along with other young girls) as she progresses through the ranks in this wonderful tale of magic, fighting and wonder. A gripping read.

I got a review copy from NetGalley in return for an honest review.

What did I think?
"It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy Convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men."

I fell in love with this one almost immediately. Mark Lawrence's writing is beautiful, almost poetic. You can tell he chose each word meticulously. If I was one to highlight, half this book would be highlighted by now.

I enjoyed Lawrence's Broken Empire but Red Sister may as well have been written by an entirely different author.

It's a dark story. It's right there in the premise, of course: a convent where young girls are raised to be killers. But it's oh so beautiful. At no point is the violent excessive and at no point do bad things happen just so the author can claim his work is grimdark or gritty.

The protagonist is a young girl, Nona. She's a terrific character and not only feels real but is well developed and someone I could immediately connect with. She's damaged, but fiery and passionate and fights for what she believes in.

The magic system and world building are both mesmerising and full of potential and possibilities. It's a captivating world. The main theme is friendship and a lot of what happens is heartbreaking.

I'm not usually a fan of the school trope and I found some of the time we spend following Nona through her training dragged a bit, but that's the only criticism I've got. Other than that I loved it and can't wait for the next instalment.

Highly recommended to any fantasy fans.

The main reason I read this book is that I wanted to find out whether Lawrence's writing had developed, but sadly it didn't as much as I'd have liked. It was hard for me to get through Prince of Shadows, and I tried Red Sister out right after that one to have a kind of touchstone, but my experiment failed. The book is not completely bad and I enjoyed some parts, but I think Mark Lawrence and I part ways here.

After finishing a high fantasy novel two books ago, I was eager to read more high fantasy. Over the last few years, YA has been primarily what I read, but high fantasy is the genre that got me reading, and I was eager for more after finishing an incredible series. So I picked up Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. And it was so good!

There's so much to this story that it's difficult to know where to start without spoiling things. Nona has a dark history, one we only get to learn in fits and starts, trickling in as the story goes along. And for such a young girl, it's terrible that she has known been involved in such violence from such a young age. The world building was incredible though, reading about the four different tribes, and the magical abilities - super speed, the ability to weave shadows, the ability to walk the Path, and growing to a huge height and strength - they have that mainly got lost over centuries, but sometimes appear in people every now and again. It's these abilities that make children with them sought after, to grow and trained into ring-fighters, or by the priests of the Church, or by the nuns of Sweet Mercy Convent, where Nona ends up after being seconds away from being hung for murder.

I absolutely adored Sweet Mercy and it's lessons. Lessons in Blade - learning to fight with and without weapons; lessons in Shade - learning to make poisons and antidotes, and, eventually, espionage and shadow-weaving; Lessons in the Path - learning Serenity, Clarity and Patience in order to walk the Path (which I'm not even going to attempt to explain because it's seriously complex); and then lessons in Academia, which focuses, for this book, on Geography, and then lessons in Spirit, learning about the religion and the Ancestor. With the lessons and strong emphasis on friendship, and those friends getting caught up in dangerous things they shouldn't get caught up in, there was a strong Harry Potter feel for me. Don't misunderstand me; do not pick up Red Sister expecting Harry Potter, because that's not what you are going to get. But with the friendship of young girls and the things they get up to, plus all the lessons, it just felt familiar and it was lovely. And those Shade classes in poisons? I got a strong Potions class from them, though Sister Apple is not really anything like Snape, even if she does occasionally poison the novices. But don't let the talk of Harry Potter familiarity get you thinking this is a nice fantasy of fighting the bad guys with magic, because it's not. Not entirely. The novices are taught how to fight properly, with fists and feet, and latter, blades. Seriously, this book is full of violent pre-teens who are becoming experts in their field. And it's exciting, and so, so cool.

But it's not all schooling. Nona has enemies due to escaping the noose. There are those who want her dead, those who will go to lengths to try and make that happen. Plus there is the prophecy of the Chosen One, who people believe the Chosen One is and their desperate attempts to control them. The overarching story is, primarily, Nona learning and rising through the classes at Sweet Mercy, and surviving when people want her dead, but there are lots of smaller sub-plot stories throughout, so there are multiple, small climaxes to each, and each sub-plot affects the next, and all affect the overarching plot. These smaller stories, these sub-plots, are part of creating the world of The Book of the Ancestor Trilogy, and make Red Sister have a setting-up feel to it, but without making it feel like a book that is all setting-up. Red Sister has it's story, and it's exciting, and intriguing, and that final climax was so epic! And I'm just so annoyed the second book isn't available for me to read now, because I'm desperate to know what the ending will mean for Nona generally, but more specifically, what it'll mean for her life at Sweet Mercy. And I just want to learn more about her, the magic she has, and who she will become. The second book is just going to be so incredibly epic, I can feel it. Red Sister is an incredible start to the trilogy, and I'm so excited to continue reading it.

Thank you to Harper Voyager via NetGalley for the eProof.

I was born for killing – the gods made me to ruin" At the Convent of Sweet Mercy young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices’ skills to deadly effect: it takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls as a bloodstained child of eight, falsely accused of murder: guilty of worse.

The first book of the Ancestor Series this is an epic fantasy, that follows the story of a young girl who ends up being saved by the Abbess of a convent where she learns plus all the normal skills of life how to fight, about trust and betray. I am looking forward to reading the next part of her story.

Wow! I said it from the first pages of the book and I am still saying it as I get to the end. Red Sister is this magnificent fantasy with seriously kick-butt fight scenes and awesome displays of magic that I was lucky enough to receive a copy of from the publisher via NetGalley. Mark Lawrence has outdone himself. I have his other books on my to be read pile but something struck me about this book that I could not wait. As soon as I had a gap in my calendar for reviews owed by specific dates I jumped into this book, feet, mind and heart first. No mistake, this book can be heart-wrenching. From the beginning of the book when the reader is introduced to Nona Grey the reader is heart sick at how she is taken from her village and moved to what must be nothing but slavery where children are trained from a very young age to fight in pits after having been bought and dragged across lands to be sold to different men who house children to make them fight.
Nona is one inch from death when she is moved to the convent of the Sweet Mercy. What is different about Sweet Mercy is that each of the novices are taught not only about the religion that is prevalent in this world, but, also the craft of being an assassin which comes in many forms. What draws the reader to the convent’s world is a cast of amazing characters, from the diverse personality and gifts of the sisters that are training the girls to each of the novices. In the middle of all the training is the promise that there is a “chosen one” in which rumors have floated across the land and it looks like she may have come to Sweet Mercy. This creates an additional rivalry as the students start vying for their roles not only in the school, but also in the world. Ara is brought to the convent under heavy guard to be protected because the emperor’s sister is known to have tried to have her taken from her family.
The convent is the one place where, like Nona, she can be safe. Nona comes to the convent under a cloud of suspicion and known to be from “peasants”. She is the youngest and smallest when she arrives and initially does not seem to take well to the others, especially after being abandoned by her village. Clera is the first person to take Nona under wing and the second person she calls friend which is of the utmost importance to Clera, so much so it resonates throughout their relationship and especially at the end of this first part of the story and leads me to my most favorite line in the book: “You choose your friends. If you’re going to worship dead people you didn’t choose, then perhaps the bonds of friendship shouldn’t be so easily broken. No?’ At the end of the day, most of us can say we didn’t choose our families, but, we did choose our friends which makes that choice of the utmost importance and something worth protecting. We have to wait until the next book to see how Clera chooses as she seems to always choose economic gain. Review can also be read at LadyTechie’s Book Musings ladytechiesbookmusings.blogspot.com.

So many book-friends from GoodReads are crushing on this and I really wanted to love it, but found it dull and unengaging... Sorry!

I mean, smashing opening line. 'It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.'

Nona is young. Assessed for powers by the child-taker she is sold from her village as no one wants to keep her there as she's always been known to be odd and not fit in. Gifted talents exist through certain clans but they need to be caught young, and with her abilities to fight she is soon sold to another, and then sent to be hanged through a series of unfortunate events.

To go with epic opening lines, a chapter opens with 'no child truly believes they will be hanged,' which is true as it's here that Nona is instead saved and taken to be a nun at Sweet Mercy's Convent for Young Girls, where they are raised to be killers depending on their specific gift. Some, like Nona, are Red Sisters - meant for fighting. It's here she makes friendships and learns the ache that can come with them, she's put to trial and protected like she has never witnessed before in her short life... but probably most importantly, she gets three square meals a day, and the food is the best she's ever had.

The first thing that stands out with this book is the world building being centred around climate change, and it would be excellent for a book study to happen between this series and that of Glenda Larke's Watergivers trilogy - though instead of lacking for water, in this world there is ice almost everywhere, and it's thick, leaving only a small corridor of usable land left for the inhabitants, who are now firmly packed together.

The second is that we see the adult and 'old' characters as a huge central focus, almost main characters of the book, and integral, in a way we don't often see. There are various mentions of what they did or what happened when they were children. Those who are now known under titles are referred to by names they used to be known by - either as a sign of friendship, or as a nasty dig that the speakers holds no respect for their current position. And it's refreshing to see them humanised where they're not just there to be plot points and elements of power or control - we get such a feel for who they are personally, and what they've been through growing up.

Overall this is an excellent book - it's rough and their world is a hard place to be part of - the powerful still control what they want by money, and Nona almost loses her life for that countless times, all over a little man's pride. The magic system, the world building - it has the detail of Sanderson's series such as Mistborn and yet somehow easier to flow into. I'm writing this review halfway through the book so I don't give too much away, and I can basically say read it! And that I'm going to go do the same right now.

I really enjoyed this offering in the world of epic fantasy. It is in some ways, very traditional and in others, wholly unique. It tells the story of the Sisters of Sweet Mercy, a training convent for practitioners of the Path and those who contain the blood of one of the four founding tribes. In structure and pacing, this is what you would expect from a fantasy book. We follow a group of young individuals as they find their strengths and undertake a quest. So far, so good. What is interesting for me here, is that this book focuses almost entirely on women. There are very few male characters at all and certainly none of them take up too much of the narrative. Lawrence has crafted a very intricate world and populated it with powerful females, fighters, magicians and nuns and for me, the mix worked really well. I found the world totally fascinating and am really looking forward to finding out more about so many aspects of this creation. A really solid opening salvo that I hope, becomes a truly ground-breaking fantasy series.