Holy Sister - Mark Lawrence

Holy Sister is the conclusion to Mark Lawrence’s ‘Book of the Ancestor’ trilogy. Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of Lawrence’s work, and that I thoroughly enjoyed both previous parts of the trilogy. I went into this book with high expectations, and I have to say at the outset, those expectations were more than met.

To me, this is a story about family, and about affection, and the ties that bind us all to each other. It’s about struggling with strangeness, and with finding the meaning in your own lives, and those of others. It’s a story about taking hard decisions, and about forgiveness. By this time, I imagine you’re familiar with Nona, whom we’ve followed from her somewhat unfortunate childhood, through her time in the convent of warrior-nuns and into the present. If not, I’d say the first word I’d use to describe her is ‘fierce’. Possibly alongside ‘bloody stubborn’ or, if pressed, maybe just ‘bloody’. Nona has an absolute loyalty to those she has decided are her friends, a quality which gleams in the underbrush of every paragraph. If not the smartest of her peer group (albeit due to some very strong competition), she’s certainly also a fast thinker, and one able to do so under pressure. But  she remains the sum of her flaws as well as her best parts; the events which have shaped her and left her with a sharp edge have also gifted her with a fast-rising temper, and the skills to make a red mist out of anyone who happens to be standing too close when it blows.

I’ve got a lot of time for Nona. She’s an amalgam if her experiences – the broken reeds of childhood, the intense need for family, for acceptance, the desire to do more, to do better. The fiery drive that works with her rage to move mountains. Like all of us, she’s not a hero or a villain in her head, but a person, broken and re-forged in each moment, trying to make the best decisions she can, and deciding what matters to her. There’s pain between the lines of these pages, raw and honest; but there’s joy as well, and the scintillating prose gives both an equal depth and truth.

This is Nona’s story, and it explores her connections into the found family she’s built for herself. I won’t go through one by one (for fear of spoilers if nothing else), but I’ll say this: they all have a part to play. This is Nona’s story, but she isn’t surrounded by ciphers. Her friends are as vividly alive as they ever were, and you can see their minds ticking over and their blood pumping. They’re people too, a strong ensemble behind the lead. They help to guide Nona, they help shape her decision, and in many cases, they help to execute them as well. They share her concerns, hopes and fears, and they feel too, taking on the burden of her world and sharing their own. This connection, this sense of togetherness, seems an accent on the larger theme. It’s also worth mentioning the antagonists, who have a tendency to be intelligent, mildly unpleasant, and utterly ruthless. Maybe they’re the heroes of their own stories. There’s certainly no moustache twirling here, just individuals, organisations and nations with incompatible goals, and a desire to see themselves win out. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t get bloody. But does mean that when it does, the emotional and narrative stakes feel higher. This is a book which isn’t pulling any punches.

Okay, so Nona is raw and vital and honest and fun to read. Great. And her friends are people too, well-crafted, vivid characters that give us different insight into her world and facets of Nona’s character. Fantastic! And the villains are cunning and terrifying. Marvellous!

But what about the story?

The story is an absolute firecracker.

I’ve now tried to describe it several times here without spoilers. I’ll say this. Lawrence is a master at building narrative tension. At making you chew your nails and turn pages wanting to know what happens next. At cutting away as everything builds to a seeming crescendo, leaping onto another thread, and winding the screw a little tighter. There’s a lot going on in these pages. All of it is important. All of it is intriguing. And I wanted to know what was going on with all of it, all at once.

The climax, when it arrives, is an absolute tour-de-force. In a story with revelation, betrayal, with grief and murder and love and joy interweaving with each other, the close is a ray of light which feels like a kick in the gut. And the denouement has the sort of emotional heft which can leave you in tears, can demolish the reader entirely, in fact.

Is that too fluffy?

Okay. If you’re not just here for the characters, for the closure, for the feels, I can promise you this:

The world is still there, and the story takes us to places we’ve never seen before. There’s ice and darkness, there’s new questions and even a few answers. There’s battles which aren’t just talking about rivers of blood, but showing human fear and courage and the price of resistance. But the blood’s there too – there’s scenes which will take your breath away with their terror and grandeur, and ones which will bring you to your feet with their immediacy. There’s sweat and dirt and tears in here, there’s intimacy amid the great sweep of armies. There’s a story which wraps all of these things together, and will make you feel them, feel this world and these people as sharply as a razor-cut.

Holy Sister is, truly, a revelation, It’s a conclusion which will leave you satisfied but also wanting more. It’s an ending and a beginning, and it’s, seriously, a bloody good story.