It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size.
Mark Lawrence, Red Sister (Book of the Ancestor, Book 1)
Nona, a young girl of around 7/8 years old is having a bad
time. She has been kicked out of her destitute village by the small minded
(terrified) townspeople, sold to a fighting promoter to be tested and trained
to fight in the rings and ended up killing the prize fighter while trying to
defend her only friend and about to be hung for the murder.
Until Abbess Glass appears and takes Nona back to the convent to become a Novice and train to be a Nun.
There Nona immerses herself in the daily life at the
convent, learning to write, read, make poisons and antidotes and train to be a
kick ass assassin/warrior Nun. You know, the usual.
In simple terms this is a story about Nona, our protagonist
and her friends learning and growing at school, dealing with things like
jealousy, feeling out of place and trying to discover who you really are. But
it also contains chosen one prophecy, touches on an impending war building
outside of the Convent walls and the politics that go along with this.
At its heart though it follows Nona and her struggles to
identify who she is and what her place in this world is. And I am so glad it
does because Nona is amazing.
In Nona, Mark
Lawrence has created one of the best Characters I have read in along time. Everything
she does in the story, the way she speaks, acts and thinks feels true to the
character and is written in such a way that you can follow and track her growth
as a person in the first few years she spends at the convent without having
things spelled out to the reader. Its organic, its real and it feels wonderful
to read.
When I first started reading The Red Sister, I did worry
that Nona was going to be a Mary Sue type of character, one that is instantly
good at most things with out really trying, but Mark Lawrence sidesteps this
issue deftly. Nona is good at some thing’s; she is great at a few thing’s and
she is downright awful at a lot of things. But she does try, and she learns,
and this does pay off as the book progresses which just adds to her character.
Nona is also smart, kind to her friends and her sense of
humour builds and you can’t help but like her. However, she is also petty about
things, can’t control her anger and makes bad decisions because she can’t trust
people when she should do, but all of these feels true to Nona as a character.
Its not like she is brilliant and amazing and then suddenly makes a bad
decision to move the story on.
Mark Lawrence has obviously spent a lot of time in crafting
Nona and a lot of her work has gone into her and this shows on the pages. With
this in mind it could have been forgiven if some of the other characters where
a little underdeveloped, but this is not the case. Each character, whether it
is the Nuns, or the Novices are all well developed. Yes, obviously some more
developed than others, but each character is recognisable by who they are, each
character acts in a way that is true to them and the dialogue is fantastic. You
can tell who is speaking by how they are speaking and what they are saying
rather than because you are told who is speaking.
The plot of the story is also strong. As I have previously
said, this book mostly focuses on the girls and their training but there is
just enough information and hints about the wider world and the impending war,
the climate issues they are facing and the politics in the nobility and ruling
class and how it affects the convent, and while these are only touched one I
believe they will play a much bigger part going in the story going forward.
My only real problem with the story was that it occasionally
jumped forward in time which I found pulled me out of the story quite a bit.
This may be because the main story was so good that I resented being pulled
away from it but I also felt that these jumps forwards just weren’t
executed quite as well as the main plot and the big reveal they were aiming for
wasn’t quite worth distracting from the main plot.
In summary I think Red Sister by Mark Lawrence is an amazing
start to a series that I feel will go on to be a classic of the genre. In Nona
Lawrence has an amazing character to build around and I am wonderfully excited
about continuing the story.
I had planned on reading a few other books before dipping
back into this series but it left me wanting more and I cant seem to
concentrate on the other books because I just want to go back and find out
what’s to come. And isn’t that exactly what you want from a book, to be so
enthralled that you just can’t let it end, even when the books has?
