Daughter of Crows by Mark Lawrence

TL;DR: You want a granny doing the bloody business? Of course you do. Read this.
Source: NetGalley, thank you so much!

Plot: A fantastically grouchy old lady kills her way through a revenge quest and we get her childhood story as well. 10/10 stars.
Characters: I loved all these unlikable jackasses.
Setting: Dark, gritty, bloody. I would never want to visit but I enjoyed this a ton.
Fantasy: Ohhhh, I can’t wait for more of this.

Summary:

The Academy of Kindness exists to create agents of retribution, cast in the image of the Furies—known as the kindly ones—against whom even the gods hesitate to stand. Each year a hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three will emerge.

The Academy’s halls run with blood. The few that survive its decade-long nightmare have been forged on the sands of the Wound Garden. They have learned ancient secrets amid the necrotic fumes of the Bone Garden. They leave its gates as avatars of vengeance, bound to uphold the oldest of laws.

Only the most desperate would sell their child to the Kindnesses. But Rue … she sold herself. And now, a lifetime later, a long and bloody lifetime later, just as she has discovered peace, war has been brought to an old woman’s doorstep.

That was a mistake.

Thoughts:

I’ve genuinely put off actually writing this review because I just enjoyed it so much. I’ve never read Mark Lawrence, he’s been forever on the TBR, just never selected. Now I see I’ve been sleeping so hard on this author. This is the fantastic grimdark answer to all the ladies who read fantasy wanting ‘an older protagonist’. I present to you 60-something year old Rue absolutely wiping out the countryside.

This is in truth alternate timelines so we do have the girls of Rue’s youth, and herself, as they go through The Academy of Kindness to possibly become the most powerful of assassins. The rest of the time we spend following Rue, so much older, trying to get vengeance for the murder of the people who might have been her friends. It’s bloody, grim, dark, and incredibly sad at times.

Rue’s constant reminder is ‘I’m not a good person’. Well that made this so much more interesting. Her tragic past, part her fault and part not. The hooks and mysteries we have left. And her friend Sharp?! I would fight for her. I loved her. There are triggers of course, this is grimdark, so check them. But I loved this so much, and it’s a huge recommendation from me.