Review of The Red Sister

The Red Sister by Mark Lawrence

Do you love a complex story set in another time with characters who draw you in and force you to live their lives? Then you need to pick this book up.

I “read” this as an audio book. I’ll address that part of it later. First let’s look at the story set in a fantasy world.

This is not a plot that is spoon-fed to you. It pulls you along and gives you only hints of what is going on. The reader is introduced to the main character in dire circumstances. Why and how she got there is muddy and continues to get more so as the story progresses. As she meets new people, more is revealed that only leaves the reader with more questions.

As the days, months, and years progress in the story, the reader discovers more secrets. The time frame of the plot is not drawn out. It focuses on the critical times of the period where the plot and the characters are advancing the most.

The characters are amazingly complex. I don’t mean that they are hard to understand, but they are realistic in their complexity. They are multi-dimensional and connectable.

The main character is a young girl named Nona who finds herself facing death many times as well as changes in her life that force her to take hold of her fate and face it. She is hard to read in the beginning as she is not so sure of herself as well. As she discovers herself, the reader is drawn in to see her struggles and achievements. She grows up before our eyes into something she never dreamed of.

I was hooked from the beginning. The story is written in third person from the point of view of the main character. The reader is limited to only what Nona knows, but it allows us to understand her actions by how she feels about others and situations she finds herself in.

The writer does a superb job in bringing this strange land to life and reveal its wonders to the reader. Foreign concepts are not always explained plainly, but they are revealed as the story unfolds and the characters use them or interact with them.

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