Red Sister

Book Title: Red Sister

Author: Mark Lawrence

Series: Book of the Ancestor #1

Date Started: October 9th 2017

Date Completed: October 23rd 2017

Genres: Fantasy, Adventure
Quality Rating: Three Stars
Enjoyment Rating: Two Star

Final Rating: Two stars

Review:

Assassins? In a convent? By a key modern fantasy writer I have yet to discover? What could go wrong? A lot, apparently.

Where to start with this book? I'm at a loss, honestly; the book has such high ratings, and I've been hearing about Lawrence for a long time. Yet, Red Sister doesn't seem to correlate to that evidence for me at all. To start with, I found the writing hard to follow. I'm well schooled in the dense writing of a lot of high fantasies, but this novel wasn't that packed with information, it was just dull and non-specific. There were lots of characters, headed by a protagonist who might have been strong in the world, but wasn't particularly in the writing.

I got 32% of the way through this book - about 150 pages. In that time, the story alternated between flashback scenes and training sequences. That is literally all that happens. Nothing else but that. I thought around the 25% mark that there was enough worldbuilding shoved in and that soon something would at least kick off in the background. 5% later, still nothing. I attempted a little more, but I'd already lost any enthusiasm I had had for this book. There's the predictable 'chosen one' mythos discussed, but no evidence yet. It's hard to keep attention on a story when you know exactly where it's going to go, but it doesn't go there for a long time. What are you waiting for anymore?

Maybe I gave up too soon and Red Sister turns great later on. But 150 pages is more than enough time for something other than training to begin. In the end, there wasn't enough to keep me motivated, and life is too short to spend reading books you aren't enjoying.