Review: Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

Title: Red Sister

Author: Mark Lawrence

Series: Book of the Ancestor #1

Genre: Adult/Fantasy/Magic

Publisher: Ace

Publication Date: April 4th, 2017

Edition: Kindle Edition, 477 pages

Source: Library

Purchase: Amazon US | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository | BAM

Synopsis:

 At the Convent of Sweet Mercy, young girls are raised to be killers. In some few children the old bloods show, gifting rare talents that can be honed to deadly or mystic effect. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls.

  A bloodstained child of nine falsely accused of murder, guilty of worse, Nona is stolen from the shadow of the noose. It takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist, but under Abbess Glass’s care there is much more to learn than the arts of death. Among her class Nona finds a new family—and new enemies. 

  Despite the security and isolation of the convent, Nona’s secret and violent past finds her out, drawing with it the tangled politics of a crumbling empire. Her arrival sparks old feuds to life, igniting vicious struggles within the church and even drawing the eye of the emperor himself.

  Beneath a dying sun, Nona Grey must master her inner demons, then loose them on those who stand in her way.

Review:

This book was fantastic. It's dark, it has great characters and an interesting magic system. This is a bloody book, with characters ranging from 9 to about 15. And it is not Young Adult. Do not mistake the young age of the characters for the content being "tame". It's a book that begins and ends with murder.

It has taken me three days to compound my thoughts and feelings to review this book. It was a roller coaster ride of a book. There were a few parts that jumped forward an undetermined amount of time, and even by the end, I wasn't sure how many years it was supposed to have been.

Nona is one of those characters that while is a pretty morally gray character, you root for them anyway because the people she up against are clearly worse. She harbors a lot of guilt for what has happened in her past, and she sees herself as monstrous for the things she has done.

It's a book I wish I had a physical copy of so I could have it to skim through and re-read my favorite parts.

There is a lot of fantastic worldbuilding. And everything I want to say about this book feels like a spoiler. 

Assassin nuns, and a magic school. I think that's the best I can say about this book that gives away zero of the plot so I won't feel like I am spoiling anything.