Holy Sister by Mark Lawrence – Review

Published: April 9, 2019

Publisher: Ace Books

Series: Book of the Ancestor #3

Genre: Fantasy

Pages: 368 (Hardcover)

My Rating: 5.0/5.0

A copy of this book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Synopsis:

The third installment in a brilliant fantasy series from the international bestselling author of Prince of Thorns.

As a young girl, Nona Grey was saved from the noose by the Abbess of Sweet Mercy. But behind the convent’s walls she learned not a life of prayer and isolation, but one of the blade and the fist. Now she will serve as the convent’s fiercest protector as the emperor moves to destroy the last bastion that stands against him.

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The epic, much anticipated finale to the Book of the Ancestor trilogy is here at last and WOWEEE it was great!!! Battle nuns, armies at the city’s doorstep, and oh yeah, THE MOON IS FAILING AND THE UNFORGIVING WALLS OF ICE ARE CLOSING ON THE CORRIDOR. ICY DEATHS AWAIT ALL THOSE WHO DWELL UPON ABETH. Whatever shall they do?

That’s easy, Abbess Glass did some plotting (did she ever stop?) and Nona did some thieving, and there was deception and risk involved. So, not actually that easy or simple. It was pretty epic though, watching all that unfold like one of those perfect little tea leaf flowers submerged in hot water. So elegant. The most jarring thing was the split timelines. One immediately follows the events at the end of Grey Sister and the other is three years later. At first I didn’t really get the purpose of the split timelines, though I quickly got used to it and towards the end everything comes together. This book focuses primarily on the events unfolding in the world at large – ie. The invading armies – and not as much on life at the Abbey, including class time and such. The battles were epic and the bloodshed fierce enough to break the readers heart at times.

Mark Lawrence continued to build on the world he had begun to create in the first two books. I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to read more books set on Abeth, whether merely in another country or in an era other than the one Nona’s story is set in. As it is though there is plenty of delightful mystery surrounding the past and those who first populated Abeth. That undefined era lets my imagination and speculation run wild. I liked that there were a few new locations explored in this installment. Imagining a trek across the ice of a frozen planet chilled me to the bone… or maybe that was just February on the East coast.

Overall, Holy Sister was an excellent conclusion to what has been my favorite of Mark Lawrence’s trilogies yet. Following Nona’s journey from childhood to adulthood and up through the ranks of students has been a delightful adventure with heavy doses of action and mischief. 10/10, would read again.