Book Review: Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence (Book of the Ancestors #2)

Mark Lawrence's story of assassin nuns continues in Grey Sister, a sequel to the acclaimed Red Sister. In this book, holy badassery clashes against a political conspiracy brewing in the empire of Abeth. It is a nail-biting story, of friendships and betrayal, and the book spelled sleepless nights for legions of fantasy readers young and old.

Synopsis:

Nona Grey's education at Sweet Mercy is reaching a milestone; the young novice must choose which path she will follow – the path of prayer, or the path of sword and fist.

While Nona ponders on her career choice behind the covenant's walls an ambitious individual, a would-be empress, musters the strengths of the inquisition and the power of the noble to strike at Nona through a system which she calls home.

Now, Nona must find her own path, and it seems all roads before her are paved in blood and death.

My thoughts on this book:

Grey Sister is very well received by readers and it has a high score of 4.45 out 5 on Goodreads. However, my feelings about this book, like its predecessor, is also mixed. On the one hand I did not enjoy the first half of the book, but once the story reached the mid point I literally could not stop reading it. Therefore while I liked Grey Sister and I think it is better than the previous book, but I hesitate to heap praises at Grey Sister the same way I did with Mark Lawrence's other fantasy series.

What did I dislike in the first half of Grey Sister? To answer this question we must first dive into the mechanics of a fantasy book.

The fantasy genre prides itself at the creativity that goes into building and imagining an alternative world, where fantastic elements are fabrics of the reality. The worldbuilding in fantasy can take on the form of fantastic creatures, an interesting "magic" system, or a bit of both. It suffices to say, in a fantasy novel the worldbuilding often flows into the story and the characters, and therefore it is a key ingredient to a successful fantasy book.

In Grey Sister, much of its worldbuilding is about the descriptions of its magic system, and it is an interesting one. However, in this book the descriptions of the magic system were mostly told from classroom scenes. This means we (the readers) learn about the magic system as the characters learn about them in their classrooms. The result is the worldbuilding in this book reads like a textbook, it is slow and oftentimes, boring. The worldbuilding (i.e. the descriptions of the magic system) took a significant portion in the book's first half, and admittedly I struggled to get through the first 200 pages. It was such a slog!

At mid-book, however, Grey Sister became a different beast. The book suddenly changed its tempo in the second half, and the pace was fast and furious. There were many surprises and the stakes were high. It was nail-biting stuff and I could not stop reading it. When I turned to the last page I immediately wanted to read the next book because I was hooked and I wanted to know what is in store for Nona and her friends.

I think Grey Sister is a better book than Red Sister but it is still a notch below Red Queen's War trilogy. The first half of the book was slow and it was a detractor. However its action-packed second half made up for it. The result is a good but not great sequel that will have you asking for more.