Author: Robin LaFevers
Title: Grave Mercy
#1 His Fair Assassin
549 pages
Published 04/03/2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Title: Grave Mercy
#1 His Fair Assassin
549 pages
Published 04/03/2012 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Plot
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?
Review
It's a vibrating tale of a killer novice's adventures during the fifteen century whose abbey raise nuns as her to take care of Britanny's duchy. I found this story gripping and well-written.
The story begins with 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?
The principal character grip us with her sad story and, how studying she gets years later, be settled in the abbey. Early, she receives an assignement and she demonstrates to be a perfect pupil who follows the abess's orders without asking questions. But her nature will split while her assignements increase. The reason will be a man called Duval who will stand in her way, turning the easy things, difficult to her.
I have enjoyed the different characters developped in the book because each and everyone of them do their duty perfectly.
My favourite characters have been Madame Hivern and her son, François, who at the beginning of the story showed some signals of troublemakers (the argument between the family due to the crown, something typical in many books) but, in the end, they give pleasant surprises to the reader.
The story focuses on the future reign of Anne, Duval's sister, in the duchy of Britanny and how the suitors to marry her fight for her and, specially, for the power. Only the interests of the population will be what dominate in the story and they will make us realize the maturity that the future twelve-year-old duchess shows.
One aspect I found a little disappointing was the relationship between Ismae and Duval that finally we can witness, but it is there, in the air.
I would recommend this book because you can find love stories, war, family and political squabbles and theater not being anything what it appears.
Plus there is humour between the lines which never fails to perk up my interest and make the pace faster. This book also showed the same cohesive story structure that was seen in the other books in this series which always earns a lot of kudos with me.
I am the kind of reader who likes it better if the story has a coherent structure as opposed to a mish mash of scenes glued together by the same theme and somebody slapped an ending to. Speaking of endings, this book ended with a good resolution to the story, but not so much for the trilogy. Although this is the third book in what they marketed as a trilogy, this book is not a conclusion to that trilogy. However, we already know that there are three more books coming in this series, so we can safely ignore the "trilogy" that they attached to these books in the beginning. Plans obviously changed. And I, for one, am glad of that change because it means more books for me to enjoy!!
Right, the ending of this book might have given a good resolution to the story but it also tantalizingly left hints and pointers to the next book in the series which left me in tenther hooks and can't wait for bloody next year! *sigh* And this is what I really don't like about serieses.
Thank you to the Treorchy Library for hosting the 
That bit appealed to the scifi/fantasy geek in me!
Then I came across this cook book. At work we have this book people who leaves books and little things samples for us to browse and you can order them cheaply. I started reading this book and I found it interesting plus I thought I could do it even with my love-hate relationship going on. The instructions looked easy enough. Doable. So I thought I'd give it a try. Anyway, I started following it and to my surprise, I actually produced delicious food!! And edible to boot!! Wonders of wonders!! Plus, it did not take me a day and year to cook. How about that? The cooking instructions are as easy as they looked at first glance and the ingredients are accessible to me as they can easily be bought at the supermarket. And that is important to me because unavailability of the ingredients talked about in the cook book frustrates me to kingdom come and is usually a very good deterrent for me stay away from that cook book ever again and stear clear of anything written by that chef. So if you are like me whose culinary skills is challenged, then this book will help you as it has helped me. I still am challenged, culinarily speaking, but now I can actually produce edible food which would not poison me or anyone eating what I cooked.
If this book was meant to help people cook better food quicker, it certainly has succeeded with me!