Sunday, June 3, 2012

Book Review: Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers



Grave Mercy (His Fair Assassin, #1)
Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?


Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.


Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?




Grave Mercy was a well-written story, with an amazing romance and a well-thought out, detailed plot. I throughly enjoyed it, but it let itself down as it was unable to draw me in. It wanted to be a page-turner, I wanted it to be a page-turner, but not matter how close it got to doing so, I was never very gripped by the story. I suspect this was because of the complexity of the story, with things mentioned once early on being important to the plot, and so on. It was hard to keep up with, and things seemed very abrupt. One minute Ismae was killing someone, then she was playing chess, and I was left wondering how it had happened.

Nonetheless, Grave Mercy was very good. The plot was so very well done. You could really imagine what was happening, and all the complexities of the world, what with the nobles and who was plotting against who and who hated who, were slipped in masterfully. The author slipped them in as needed and as they were relevant to the plot. This did fail in places where, as I mentioned, things were only mentioned once and/or very early on yet turned out to be very important despite no other hints.

The characters were also very well done. They really seemed realistic, at least for the context they were in. The main characters developed as the story went on, and the book very much revolved around them. The more minor characters, such as Beast, could have done with more story time. But wow, the romance! It was so good! I hate stories where characters fall in love as soon as they lay eyes on each other and then the whole plot ends up pushed aside so we can read all about them. Grave Mercy was nothing like this! The romance was so well placed, and two plots, the romance and the whole drama over the duchess and the war, were entwined really well. While Ismae was secreting around, she was also struggling with her growing feelings towards Duval. It was all really well laid out, and I loved the romance so much.

Grave Mercy is definitely worth reading. You might not have the same issues I did with it, and the romance and story itself is so worth it. Pick it up today!


I rated this book 4stars

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