Trigger warning for child abuse.
Assassins aren’t supposed to get old, especially ones that serve the triple goddess. Despite the odds, Rue has grown old. For ten years, she’s lived a quiet life rusticating on the edge of the empire. The quiet comes to a bloody end when mercenaries turn up looking for Rue and kill everyone—including Rue. This surprising start to Mark Lawrence’s bloody novel, Daughter of Crows, is just the beginning because the goddesses Rue once served refuse to let her stay dead until she delivers one last act of divine justice.
Daughter of Crows is constructed to keep us guessing about what’s going on and, at times, who is who. Rue’s story line crosses back and forth between the mundane world and the river that borders the afterlife (complete with ferryman). We learn that Rue was once a greatly feared Kindness, though it isn’t until we get the perspectives of Bek, Einsa, and Mollandra that we know what that means. In between chapters showing Rue’s march to find the person who ordered the deaths of her friends (and her own), chapters narrated by three young girls at the Academy of Kindness show us the grueling and often fatal training it takes to make a Kindness. Once, Kindnesses stalked the law delivering justice in the service of the Furies. Only three girls in each class will ever graduate. Yet another narrator, known as Eldest, reveals that there are paths even worse than the one faces by potential Kindnesses.
This book rewards the patient. There were some chapters that were so terrifying that I was tempted to chicken out. What kept me in was, first, characters that I couldn’t help but root for no matter how prickly, and, second, hints that this world really does have divine forces watching out for humanity. In spite of everything—the violence, the competition, the trauma—characters like Rue are able to find friends to share their burdens. The bonds of friendship in this world are so strong that they can last longer than a lifetime. I also took comfort from the fact that the Furies or the Morrígan are around to mete out justice to anyone who breaks their laws. People in this world are very violent, often for apparently inexplicable reasons. Knowing that there would be justice someday gave me enough hope to offset the relentless cruelty and death in Daughter of Crows. Readers who like their fantasy on the grim side will enjoy this original, feminist tale.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via NetGalley, for review consideration.