Holy Sister Review

Paperback, 336 Pages
Adult/ Fantasy
By: Mark Lawrence
Rating: 🌟🌟🌟 3/4

“There might not be a meaning to the world, or in it, but that does not mean that what we do has no meaning.”

Red Sister ★★★★
Grey Sister ★★★★
Holy Sister ★★★ 3/4

I thought Holy Sister would be my favorite book in the series but it was the opposite. Don’t get me wrong, the difference in my ratings for the three books is very minimal but I wanted more from this entry and I was a bit underwhelmed at the end.

There are a lot of things that worked for me though, the writing is great and it encouraged me to continue reading Lawrence’s books after a bad experience with his first series. The world-building is interesting too and I don’t claim to understand everything about the world but I enjoyed what we had pretty much.

My main problem with this book is that it was slower than the first two books. I was past 50% and still wasn’t hooked as I should be. The characters were more interesting for me in the previous two books. In This book we have events that happened after the end of book 2 and events after 3 years in the current timeline. Compare this to Abbess Glass and Nona’s narrative in book two and I think the scale would easily be in book two’s favor.

The thing is some important things happen between these story lines but they happen off page and I am talking about really important things here. I was a bit confused and thought that I missed something but I checked back in the book and then saw some non-spoilery reviews and a bunch of reviewers mentioned the same exact point which reassured me but also made this criticism more valid.

And to be fair to the book, the ending was satisfactory and there were some really good action scenes and plots happening through the book and specially in the last third of the book so don’t let this defer you from reading the book.

“A million words won’t push the ice back, not even the breadth of a finger. But one word will break a heart, two will mend it, and three will lay the highest low.”

Summary: A good and satisfactory finale to the trilogy although I couldn’t connect to it as much as I did to the previous two books. I think I’m in the minority when I say book two is my favorite then one the third one. There are some really good moments and the world-building and characters are as good as ever. I simply did not agree with some of the author’s choices.