Synopsis:
Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a monster to punish monsters.
The Academy of Kindness exists to create agents of retribution, cast in the image of the Furies – The Kindly Ones – against whom even the gods hesitate to stand.
Each year one hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three emerge.
The Academy’s halls run with blood. The few who survive its decade-long nightmare have been forged on the sands of the Wound Garden. They have learned ancient secrets amid the necrotic fumes of the Bone Garden. They leave its gates as avatars of vengeance, bound to uphold the oldest of laws.
Only the most desperate would sell their child to the Kindnesses. But Rue … she sold herself. And now, a lifetime later, a long and bloody lifetime later, just as she has discovered peace, war has been brought to an old woman’s doorstep.
That was a mistake.
Review:
A deadly assassin, necromantic Academy where only three girls can graduate. The rest are killed.
Two storylines, both based on fury.
One, an Academy where the training is vicious, meant to procure three Kindnesses, mythic figures meant to exact justice.
Then, an old woman hiding from her past who must confront her brutal history when mercenaries attack her quiet life.
You have to have your brain turned on with Mark Lawrence books. I liked playing the guessing game at the start, connecting the dots Lawrence lays out. I managed it at 21%.
The plot is most similar to Red Sister. One of my minor quibbles was that it was very obvious that they have the same author. The prose is akin to The Book That Wouldn’t Burn – reflective, purposeful, and sometimes profound.
You see girls coming of age, dealing with death and vigour, and liveliness. This is contrasted with the latter years looking at death with tiredness, brittleness, and dismay.
Age took the beauty that I never recognized when it was mine. It dressed me in this tapestry of scars, and for each one of them sewn silver through my skin a dozen others lie too deep to see. Age stole my grace and left me stumbling on towards a final sunset.
The book jumps between different story lines, and when it clicks together, Lawrence still has you piecing things together until the end.
I am conflicted because whilst I binged this and enjoyed it, I also felt like this felt very reminiscent of his previous books. Not a bad thing if that’s what you’re looking for, but not as fresh as I would have liked.
I hope we get to see more of the mythology behind the world-building as a lot is thrown at you with little hand-holding.
Don’t go in expecting your usual dark academia fantasy; this is gritty and dark and unflinching. It is also balanced with an aged protagonist.
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