Format: Hardcover, 368 pages
Release Date: April 9, 2019
Publisher: ACE
Source: Publisher
Genre: Fantasy / Epic
The searing conclusion of the thrilling epic fantasy trilogy that saw a young girl trained by an arcane order of nuns grow into the fiercest of warriors.
They came against her as a child. Now they face the woman.
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.
Holy Sister is the third and epic conclusion to the Book of the Ancestor trilogy by author Mark Lawrence. For those who haven't read this series so far, let me offer a summary without spoilers. The world is called Abeth, a planet orbiting a dying red sun with a mirror that keeps the ice from taking over the planet. The vast majority of its people live in what's being called a corridor around the equator. According to legends, thousands of years ago, 4 tribes of men (gerant, hunska, marjal, and quantal) came to Abeth from the stars and found a vanishing people called the Missing.
As a child, Nona Grey was brought to Sweet Mercy Convent by Abbess Glass after she was sold to a group known for training fighters for ring combat. Novices are trained in four classes of discipline: Holy Sister, Grey Sister, Red Sister, and Holy Witch/Mystic Sister. Nona is a rarity in this world as she carries 3 of the 4 bloodlines of the original tribes of men. Nona's main core of friends are Arabella Jotsis (Ara), Zole, Ruli, and Jula. Zole is from the ice tribes and is thought to be the only 4 blooded with all the skills of all 4 bloods. Both Nona and Zole have destinies that have been slowly revealed across the three books.
It was thought that Zole is the prophesied Chosen One while Nona was her shield. This story alternates between the present
and the past following the exploits of Nona Grey and her sisters. The
past is where the previous installment, Grey Sister, left off with Nona escaping with Zole, Ara, Abbess Glass and Sister Kettle. The present finds Nona
in Holy Class trying to figure out what path she will take in order to
become a full sister while also putting together a plan that will
save the world.
As I stated above, the book is split into two parts: Present Day Holy Class, and The Escape which happened three years before and connects with Grey Sister. In the past, Nola and Zole find themselves being chased by vicious assassins and Sherzal's soldiers across the ice after Zole escaped with Sherzal's shipheart. In
Holy class Nona faces final challenges that must be overcome if she
is to become a full sister in the order of her choice.
But, the ice still
advances, the Corridor still narrows, and the empire is under siege.
Scithrowl have invaded in the east, Durns in the west. The war between Queen Adoma and the Emperor Crucical have sent the emperor’s armies in retreat and the only thing that seems to be able to stand in the way, is Nona and her sisters. It seems unlikely that Nona and her
friends will have time to earn the habit of a nun before war is on their
doorstep. I think it was a remarkable choice that Nona made between being a Red Sister, Grey Sister, Holy Sister or Mystic. I have to say that the author has planned this out as a long game drawn out by the deceased Abbess Glass.
Glass knew that it would take cunning and planning to figure out how to use both Nona and Zole to her advantage. Nona's perspective is the only one that readers can expect this time out, and I think that's fair since we, as readers, will get a look into who she has become between 3 years in the past, and how far she's come as a character as well in present time. I was struck how marvelous things worked out, and yes, I was kind of shocked by which choice Nona took knowing she was probably the best, or second best fighter in the entire Convent. The plot of this book is intense, and there is plenty of action for a variety of readers. Overall a fantastic way to finish the series.
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1
Holy Class
Present Day
Markus
had grown beyond Nona’s expectations. She remembered a fierce
spiky-haired farm boy who had welcomed her to Giljohn’s cage by
demanding her age and had appeared to find comfort in establishing his
seniority over her. A bad beginning, but his affection for the
child-taker’s mule had softened her opinion of him by the end of their
journey. Now he stood a solid six foot two, handsome in a friendly way, a
face that would laugh with you. The black hair had been tamed with oil
and lay flat to his skull in the way of monks. The only sign of the boy
from the cage was a sharpness to his features and a quickness in the
dark eyes that studied her.
Nona
had wrapped her cloak around her once more. Sweat stuck the material to
her back, making her uncomfortable, or perhaps that was just the
frankness of Markus’s regard. She offered a smile in return for his and
hugged her hands under her arms. Her knuckles ached from repeatedly
punching Denam. Nona was sure she’d punched practice timbers that were
softer than the gerant’s side. She felt good, though, her body glowing,
her step so light that with a little effort she might just shrug off
gravity entirely.
She leaned in. “Let’s talk outside.”
Markus
nodded. They pushed a path towards the main doors. Already the
Caltess’s patrons were flocking back to the other ring. A couple of
hulking apprentices were helping Denam over the ropes of the first.
“I’m surprised the convent lets novices come down here to fight,” Markus said behind her.
“They don’t.” Nona slipped between the doors as they opened to admit more thrill-seekers.
“Why
did you-” Markus broke off to draw his robes around him, the black
habit of a holy brother. He followed her out into rain-laced wind, a
loud brrr escaping at the cold shock of it.
“An
old dispute that needed settling,” Nona said. It was partly true.
Mostly she had wanted to hit someone, hard, again and again. Markus
probably knew that already; classified church reports named him as one
of the most effective marjal empaths currently in the Ancestor’s
service.
Nona
led Markus around the corner of the great hall where they would be
sheltered from the gale. The walls loomed dark above them, the sky
crossed with tatters of cloud beneath the crimson spread of a thousand
dying stars.
“Why
did you want me? Send the message, I mean?” Markus seemed less sure of
himself than she had expected. Someone who could read her like a book
should be more confident. She certainly wished her own empath skills
would tell her more of his mood than she could glean from the intensity
of his stare or the tight line of his lips.
“That
day at the Academy.” The words blurted from her. “Did you make that
girl attack me?” Nona forced her mouth closed. She had had it all
planned out, what she would say, how, when. And now her idiot tongue had
cut through all of it.
“She…she was already attacking you.” Guilt came from him in waves.
“She
was using the darkness to scare me. Or trying to. But then she went
mad.” Nona remembered how an animal fury had risen across the girl’s
face. “You did that!”
“I did.” A frown now, his brow pale and beaded with rain.
“She tried to shadow-rend me. I could have been torn apart!”
Markus raised his hands. “I made her angry. I didn’t know she could do that.”
“Well, she could!” Nona felt her own anger rising from the well she’d thought emptied in the ring.
“I’m sorry.” He looked down.
“Well…” It felt like honesty, but Nona supposed he could fake that better than anyone she’d ever known. “Why?”
“Abbot Jacob told me to.”
“Jacob?” A chill ran through Nona. “High Priest Jacob? I mean the one who used to be?”
Markus nodded, still looking down.
“But…he’s not…you don’t have to…”
“He was appointed to St. Croyus as abbot a year after Abbess Glass had Nevis replace him as high priest.”
“St. Croyus? But Jacob’s a monster!” Nona couldn’t see how the former high priest could have risen from disgrace so swiftly.
“A
monster with friends in high places. Including the Tacsis.” Markus
shrugged. “And he’s not a stupid man, just a cruel and greedy one.”
“So
he bought you from Giljohn, sent you to St. Croyus, and followed you
there to take over?” Nona had seen the high priest beat Giljohn’s mule
to death and leave Markus broken. And that was just on the day he’d
purchased him as a frightened boy of ten. How must it have been to grow
up under that man’s command?
“I’m
sorry.” Markus looked up and met her eyes. She gave him points for not
using his power to try to influence her. She would know. At least she
hoped she would know. He couldn’t be that good, could he? Markus
coughed. “So, did you ask me down here to beat me senseless? Kick me in
the groin? Or is my apology enough?”
A man hurried around the corner before Nona could answer. He approached them, hunched against the rain.
“Regol?” Nona asked. She’d looked for the ring-fighter in the crowd before she took on Denam but not spotted him.
“At your service, my lady!” He made a sweeping bow, managing to keep both eyes on Markus.
Nona couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not your lady, or anyone else’s.”
“A
remarkable victory, novice.” Regol straightened. “Our ginger friend can
be a stubborn fellow.” His eyes held a certain distance, a reassessment
perhaps.
“You saw?” She had wanted him to.
“The whole thing. And did you hear the newest recruits cheering in the attic?”
Nona flexed her hands, grimacing. “I thought he wasn’t ever going to go down.”
Regol
winced. “The real question is whether he’s going to get up again, and
what he’ll sound like.” He squeaked the last part, then turned his gaze
on Markus as if noticing him for the first time. “I would ask if this
monk is bothering you, but I guess if he was he’d be on the ground
looking for his teeth.” Again that look, as if he saw a different person
before him tonight.
“I’m
sure Nona can have a disagreement without punching anyone in the face.”
Markus returned Regol’s stare. “Not everyone who climbs out of the ring
just steps into a bigger one.”
Regol
shrugged, that mocking smile of his firmly in place. “The whole
Corridor is a ring around Abeth, brother. And when the ice squeezes,
everyone fights.”
“Go away,” Markus said.
Regol
opened his mouth with some reply but a puzzled look overtook him. He
turned to go, then spun back as if he had forgotten something.
“You
would rather be watching the fights.” Markus spoke without emphasis but
the waves of power bleeding from him shocked Nona with their intensity.
It was as if someone had opened a furnace door and an unexpected wall
of heat had broken across her.
Regol turned back and walked off without comment.
“He won’t be pleased when that wears off,” Nona said.
“No.” Markus nodded. “But it would have been worse if he’d stayed longer. He didn’t like me at all, and we both know why.”
“Oh.”
Nona laughed, though it came out wrong. “Regol’s not like that. He
flirts with all the girls. The ladies of the Sis practically worship-”
“It’s you he wants, Nona. You don’t have to be an empath to know that.”
“No,
he’s just…” She trailed off as Markus shook his head, his smile
half-sad. “Anyway, you got rid of him easily enough.” A twinge of
disappointment had run through her at that.
“Easily?”
Markus leaned back against the wall. “He put up a hell of a fight. I
would never have suspected it of a Caltess brawler.” He put his fingers
to his temples. “I’ll probably have a headache all night…”
Nona
said nothing, only glanced towards the corner. After Joeli had made
Regol abandon Darla mid-fight at Sherzal’s palace the ring-fighter had
asked Nona to help him. He hadn’t wanted to be manipulated like that
ever again. Nona had spent hours training him to erect barriers against
that kind of thread-work. He would take this defeat badly.
Nona
defocused her vision and looked at Markus amid the glory of the
threads, the Path’s halo. Marjal empathy was essentially thread-work
that concentrated only on living threads and manipulated them more
intuitively, based around emotional clusters. It was, in many senses, a
tool designed for a specific job; whereas a quantal thread-worker had
ultimately more potential and flexibility, the task was always more
fiddly and harder work. The threads around Markus formed a glowing aura,
brighter and more dynamic than any she had seen before. The host of
threads that joined him to her-some years old, some freshly formed-ran
taut, shivering with possibility, unvoiced emotions vibrating along
their length. Markus would read it better than she could, but he would
feel the answer rather than seeing it before him in the complexity that
filled the space between them.
In
fact, Sister Pan had revealed that all marjal enchantment was simply
the power of the Path and the control of thread-work, but collected
together into useful tools in the same way that iron and wood may be
turned into many different implements, and many of those are of more
immediate use than a log and a bar of iron and the option to shape both.
“Nona?”
Nona realised that Markus had said something she missed. She looked back.
“You asked me here…”
“I
did.” She stepped closer and he pressed his shoulders to the wall,
every thread he had bent towards her, like the reflex of a river-anemone
to touch. “I need your help.”
Markus frowned. “I can help you?”
“I need to do something dangerous and illegal.”
Markus’s
frown deepened. “Why would you trust me? Because we rode together for a
few weeks in a cage when I was ten and you were eight? I nearly got you
killed two years later.”
“I
trust you because you didn’t ask me why I thought you would help, just
why I would trust that help. And also because you didn’t lie about what
happened at the Academy.”
“All right.” He met her eye. “Why would I help you? It’s dangerous and against the law.”
“You’ll
help me because when they put us in that cage we never really came out
of it again. And because your Abbot Jacob is still tied to the Tacsis
name and so are his plans for further advancement. Doing this will help
make sure that never happens. Hessa told me what happened to Four-Foot
when Giljohn took you to Jacob’s house.”
“I
suppose you think me weak, serving a man who did something like that? I
suppose you would have beaten him to death?” Markus didn’t try to hide
the mix of anger and shame bubbling through him.
“Maybe I would have killed him, but you’re a better person than I am. I’m not proud of my temper.”
Markus
twisted his lips into half of a doubtful smile. “So, you need me, and
you trust me. What is it that you need me for, and trust me not to
betray you over?”
Nona
glanced over her shoulder into the night. From inside the Caltess the
crowd’s roar swelled. Another bout coming to a bloody end, no doubt. “I
have to break into the Cathedral of St. Allam and steal something from
High Priest Nevis’s vault of forbidden books.”
2
The Escape
Three Years Earlier
In
the dark of the moon by the side of the Grand Pass two dozen citizens
of the empire huddled away from the wind. Dawn would show them an
unparalleled view of that empire, spread out before them to the west,
marching between the ice towards the Sea of Marn.
Nona
stood close to the rock wall, pressed between Ara and Kettle. Her leg
ached where the stump of Yisht’s sword had driven in, pain shooting up
and down as she shifted her weight, the whole limb stiffening.
Abbess
Glass had gathered the survivors in a bend where the folds of the cliff
offered some shelter. There were among their number men and women who
owned substantial swathes of the Corridor, who had been born to
privilege and to command. But here in their bloodstained finery, with
flames from the palace of the emperor’s sister licking up into the night
behind them, it was to Abbess Glass they turned for direction.
“It
will take Sherzal’s soldiers a while to navigate around Zole’s
landslide but they’ll come. It won’t take long then to alert the
garrisons and send riders down the road to Verity. There’s no chance of
making the capital that way.”
“We don’t need to reach Verity.” Lord Jotsis spoke up. “My estates are closer.”
“Castle Jotsis is formidable,” Ara said, looking between her uncle and the abbess.
Abbess
Glass shook her head. “Sherzal will bottle us up anywhere but the
capital. She might not be insane enough to lay siege to your castle, my
lord, but she would likely encircle your holdings to prevent word
reaching the emperor. And besides, I fear that closer is not close
enough.”
“So
we’ve escaped only to be hunted down on the road?” One side of old Lord
Glosis’s face had swollen into a single bruise but she still had enough
energy to be temperamental. “Unacceptable.”
“It’s
the shipheart that Sherzal wants above anything else.” The abbess
nodded to where Zole waited, some thirty yards closer to the landslide,
her hands dark around the glowing purple sphere she had recovered from
the Tetragode. “If we give her good reason to think that it has gone in
another direction she won’t spare many soldiers for chasing us. Maybe
none.”
“And how,” Lord Jotsis asked, “can we make her think we haven’t taken the shipheart with us?”
Abbess
Glass turned to stare at the darkness of the slopes rising above them.
“By making them think it has gone south, towards the ice.”
“How can we make them think it’s been sent south?” Lord Glosis asked, leaning on the arm of a young relative.
“By actually sending it south, to the ice,” the abbess said. “Zole will take it and let them see the glow upon the slopes.”
“But that’s madness.” Lord Jotsis drew himself to his full height. “You can’t entrust a treasure like that to a lone novice!”
“I
can when it’s the lone novice who somehow stole that treasure from the
heart of the Noi-Guin’s stronghold in the first place,” Abbess Glass
replied.
“She won’t be alone.” Nona limped forward.
glad you enjoyed it to the end.
ReplyDeletesherry @ fundinmental