I was born for killing – the gods made me to ruin. At the Convent of Sweet Mercy young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices’ skills to deadly effect: it takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls as a bloodstained child of eight, falsely accused of murder: guilty of worse. Stolen from the shadow of the noose, Nona is sought by powerful enemies, and for good reason. Despite the security and isolation of the convent her secret and violent past will find her out. Beneath a dying sun that shines upon a crumbling empire, Nona Grey must come to terms with her demons and learn to become a deadly assassin if she is to survive…
The Review
Badass fighting nuns, magic and a dying world, a group of girls who come from completely different worlds and castes and still become friends. Do I need to give you more reasons to read this book? Don't get me wrong, it's filled with child and animal abuse, pieces of crap men and some serious prejudice to the impoverished, but don't let that scare you from this story. This book was so good that I immediately went to my library and checked out the next two books in the series and panicked when I had to wait a week to get the last one from a different county because mine doesn't have it in circulation.
So okay, Nona is wonderfully interesting and I love that you really don't know what her story is and that it continued to change based on outside perspective. What you perceive is the only reality that matters and yet it's all too easy to forget that we are not fool proof. What we believe is fact doesn't make it so and Nona is not immune from this. Time and again we see her grow as she learns this lesson, both about herself and about the girls in her class. I love the relationship between Ara and Nona. I really thought it was going to be a cliched "mean rich girl" situation. Much the same with Darla, who I thought was going to be the bully we hate. That's one thing about the way the characters have been written that makes them truly magical: they ALL grow and develop and whether you like them or hate them, that could always change in a few chapters, just like with real people.
One thing I didn't like was so much foreshadowing really gave the end of the "flash forward" away. There was too much given that made it completely obvious and I would have loved to have been punched in the gut with a particular revelation. I can safely admit that I have NO IDEA what the long term of the story is. Like, a little bit maybe but it could really become a million different things. All I do know for certain is that I love how loyal Nona is, how anger fuels her. I love that she is forced to question herself and her abilities. This is such a good book that I wish I had discovered sooner.
