We begin this book about 2 years after the end of Red Sister.

Except for Clera and Hessa, Nona and company are all back at Sweet Mercy moving up to grey class and enjoying new rivalries and enemies there.   Yes folks, it's more of the catholic girls school dorm rivalry and pecking order stuff that Red Sister was full of.   However, the petty rivalries and pecking order stuff don't take up much of our time as this book soon picks up speed as Nona has to run away from Sweet Mercy to escape the Inquisition who have turned up at Sweet Mercy with a nefarious agenda.

I was hoping that this book would be much better than Red Sister and i wasn't disappointed.   It's well good and immensely unputdownable.   I don't really want to say any more because i think i'll give away too much of the story.   Suffice it to say, if the slow pace of the bulk of Red Sister left you a little disappointed but you enjoyed the faster pace of the ending, then you'll really enjoy this, so definitely give it a go.

Next up is Bound, which is a novella that one should read before moving onto Holy Sister. ( )

4,5 stars

- I loved the characters. Some of them I loved to hate. Keot I loved despite myself.
- The writing is great, but in all honesty my simple brain prefers simpler prose.
- Much like the first book, Grey Sister didn't exactly make me feel a lot of things beside excitement. (But more than Red Sister.)

I'm tempted to get Holy Sister on Kindle and just finish the series straight away, but I think I'll wait for the audiobook that should be out by the end of the month. ( )

Ágætis framhald hjá Lawrence af sögu Nonu Grey sem er heldur áfram námi í klaustrinu hjá bardaganunnunum. Hún er enn í sárum eftir missi vinkonu sinnar er líka farin á næsta námsstig sem er öllu erfiðara því þolinmæði hentar lítt hinni öru og ofsafengnu Nonu. Hún á sér nóg af andstæðingum frá fyrri sögunni og þeir gera nú öfluga atlögu að Nonu og því verndaða umhverfi sem hún býr við í klaustrinu.
Skemmtilegur heimu sem Lawrence hefur skapað en stenst þó ekki við heimsmyndina í Broken Empire sem er ein af uppáhalds ritröðum mínum. ( )

Superb!

Despite being the middle book of a trilogy, Grey Sister does not come across as a filler. There's a proper story arc, and even someone who has not read the first book will enjoy it, albeit not as much as one who's read Red Sister. The plot takes on darker overtones than before: Keot, Joeli Namsis, the Tacsis family all hover like grey clouds, menacing and threatening to unleash themselves on the unsuspecting reader.

There were a lot of similarities to Harry Potter in this book though: Tallow aka McGonagall; the Abbess aka Dumbledore; Inquisitor Pelter aka Umbridge, and Sister Wheel aka Snape. There's even a scene where the Abbess is absent when Nona finally wants to confide in her, thus pushing Nona to take action (Philosopher's Stone, anyone?) Not that I'm complaining. If ever a book could've topped Harry Potter in my affection, it's this one. On a serious note, though, this feeling of deja vu leaves you somewhere midway as the story takes on a whole new level. The incredible description of the Noi-Guin stronghold was as terrifying as Shelob's lair in LOTR. When Nona and her friends are exploring some underground caves, they come across a creature of myth. This is how the author describes the fear it generates:
Nona felt it, like a squall racing across the flatness of open fields, something big, something vast that would carry her off. The walls seemed to pull away, the touch of her friends fade to nothing. Every fear she owned hurtled towards her out of the night at terrifying speed.

The rocks around her began to bleed. An awful rasping breath shuddered through the blackness. And out there a howling hate, condensing. A darker clot of night. The stench of decay surrounded her.
I read this thrice, so beautifully written did I find it. And truth be told, I was a bit afraid.

As for the characters:
Nona is no longer the same girl we left at the end of Red Sister. Her character has evolved with age, and though she is still a wildcat, the book portrays her as a slightly restrained one. The part where she showed mercy to Giljohn, who tried to shoot and re-capture her exhibits her maturity; she would not have done so in book 1. Ruli, Jula, Ara, Darla, Kettle, even taciturn Zole all tug at my heartstrings; Lawrence gives them enough scope and attention to prevent the book from hinging too much on the protagonist. There's more of Kettle and Apple, too. Yay!!

And now, for the best part of the book: its scintillating prose. Consider these:

Hers the storm’s wrath, thunder-shaken, sharp with lightning, blown on a wind that rips the oldest trees from the hardness of the ground. Hers the defiance of stone, raised in outrage against cold skies.

The fortress of you is built of such moments, they are stones dropped into the well of your tomorrow.

Spend too long watching the long game and the short game will kill you.

Smells will do that for you, reach out and pull you back across the years.

The emblems, resplendent in glowing colours beneath rain-beaded varnish, announced a gathered throng of unmatchable pedigree.

You may be rocks but humanity is the tide and you only have to stand upon the sand to see how that contest concludes.

Enough said! ( )

Absolutely brilliant. I wish it were longer so I could have enjoyed it for another day. ( )