Red Sister — Mark Lawrence

Red Sister -- Mark LawrenceThe first book in a trilogy that leaves me reaching straight for the next book, Grey Sister.

Admittedly, it’s mostly about a bunch of young girls training to become warrior nuns, wielding weapons both corporeal and magical, so it might not get the hard core fantasists satisfied.   But the book ends really well and we can hopefully move on now to a more grown up story.

Set on an ice world with a dying sun that uses a large mirror satellite to focus the suns meagre rays onto a thin band of area around the equator where most of the people live.   The world was populated by a diaspora from space and the remains of the ships that brought the various peoples to the planet are enviously fought over by warring factions.   Somewhere amongst the remains lies the ability to take control of the satellite and therefore control of the whole planet.

My only real issue with it was that it was a bit long winded and one does get the feeling that a good editor would have trimmed this down quite substantially.   Still, it was worth enduring for the end bit which turned the speed dial up to 11 after being at 5 for the previous several hundred pages: the contrast was quite something.

Fingers crossed for the next book then.

Mark’s Page

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