Nona isn’t your typical hero, she isn’t an orphan but she doesn’t come from a happy home. After losing her Father her Mother abandon’s her and a nine-year old Nona ends up at the Convent of Sweet Mercy. This isn’t somewhere that normally takes in waifs and strays. There is a fee for girls to go here it’s somewhere the richer families of Abeth send their daughters, and the fee is not something Nona can pay, but the Abbess seems to have her own reasons for taking Nona in, reasons she isn’t sharing with anyone, especially not Nona. Most novels which start when our hero is a child finish when our hero is an adult, we skip over them growing up and boom they do their heroic deed in their adult form. This is not the case here. Nona is a child hero. She is a child fighter, a child warrior. The oldest we see her is about 11/12 but don’t be fooled into thinking this is a childs book or even a young adult novel. Nona, has moments where she shows her young age, and these moments are refreshing and made me giggle and remember that I was reading a story with someone who was young, who should be innocent, but wasn’t. Then she would jump straight back to being her grown self. Her life experiences have shaped her to being so much older than her years. She was tenacious and loyal but she had a terrible temper which risked getting her in trouble. The convent and it’s training is harsh but not unfair. I never felt like the girls were being treated unfairly, that the Nuns were bullying them or that the girls were at risk. But they were toughening the girls up, making warriors out of them. The work they were doing had an end game and sometimes the girls may get hurt. In our world what they were doing would definitely seem cruel but they don’t live in our world and their world is cruel! Nona isn’t afraid to stand up for what she deems is right, even if that means going up against powerful people. She is willing to fight for what she believes is right, and does to the detriment of her own safety. This leads to Nona’s final battle which is excruciating to read, I honestly didn’t see how she was going to make it through, even though I knew this was the beginning of a new series I couldn’t see a way out. Oh and I forgot to mention she has a Wolverine style power. Yeah! So, I ended up spending the last hundred pages or so with my breath held, toes clenched, and grinding my teeth, there was just so much tension. And no, I’m not going to tell you how it ended! Red Sister is a stunning piece of literature. I was swept away by this novel, the intricately woven narrative which wastes no time starting at page one and keeping you entwined until the final word. I highly recommend this not only to fans of fantasy but to people looking for a novel that is going to dig deep into their soul and grasp their heart tight. A huge thanks to Mark Lawrence and Harper Voyager for the eARC of this book in return for my honest review.

Cracking start to his next trilogy. I can't wait for the next book. The first few chapters are a little slow to begin with but it soon picks up and then you're hooked. Any Mark Lawrence fan would love this.

This book is everything I could want and more. A relatable bad ass heroine, magic and friendship. It was an incredible story and it was such an honour to read this book. The story was continuously engaging and the writing was superb. This book speaks for itself and I think a review of the full book would be wasteful, you just have to read this book to understand it's incredible story.

This is by far my favourite Mark Lawrence series, the plot is elegant and even when there isn't very much going on it is still far from mundane. Nona is just a little girl but already she has done terrible things, unlike alot of Lawrence's other characters she had no choice and did them to protect others and not her own selfish reasons. She ends up with nuns but not nuns like we know them, nuns that are deadly poisoners, assassins and witches. This first book is a coming of age tale with a difference, we follow Nona as she makes friends and comes into her own, as she makes choices that will echo far into the future. I eagerly await more of this series!

I have not read any of Mark Lawrence's books before this one, but I can't wait to read the next one in the Red Sister trilogy.