[gmw]

Red Sister by Mark Lawrence. First of the Book of the Ancestor trilogy. The setting was interesting and neatly revealed, and the story was intriguing. I particularly liked the hints of sci-fi. But the narrative was overly long, sometimes felt repetitive, and rather lacking in direction. The prologue suggested the destination, but this book never gets close to that. While the ending does wrap up one minor aspect of the story, most of it is left hanging. This book seemed to have had so much going for it that I feel quite disappointed. Stretching to 3/5 for the good bits and because I'm interested enough to try the next instalment (mostly because it is already on my reader).

Grey Sister by Mark Lawrence. Second of the Book of the Ancestor trilogy. This is a Did Not Finish. It's still trying to milk the clever prologue from the first book but I'm no longer buying it. It jumps forward a few years in the schooling but apparently none of the characters grew up in that time. And now there's a demon that has apparently been around since the end of the first book but wasn't worth mentioning, and it feels really out of place. Bite me!


Edited to Add: Another thought I had about this trilogy that I wasn't going to mention, but the more I think about it the stronger seem the parallels with Harry Potter. It's mostly a school setting (albeit run by an order of particularly violent nuns rather than mostly sweet and gentle old fogies), with four blood/race types (vs houses). An Abbess (school principle) that sort of takes the main character under her wing but also seems at times quite cruel. The one really harsh teacher/nun that doesn't seem to like our main protagonist. A main protagonist whose special skill reveals itself and convenient times to save their life but otherwise just causes trouble. I could go on. The difference being that I enjoyed Harry Potter.