Book Review: The Girl and the Moon, Book of Ice Book 3, Mark Lawrence
Fantasy: The Girl and the Moon, Book of Ice Book 3, Mark Lawrence
Blog Tour May 11, 2022
When your novel starts with the execution of your protagonists, you’ve set a high bar for yourself to climb. Fortunately, Mark Lawrence is an experienced mountaineer and is able to lead us to the peaks.
Yaz, Thurin, and their companions have been captured by an old enemy and sentenced to death. Fortunately, those charged with carrying out the execution have their own agenda. They cannot save the condemned, but they can arrange for the opportunity for the condemned to save themselves.
Getting themselves saved, though, is radically different than being safe. As long as their enemies hold power and as long as their own magic is incomplete, they and their world remain in danger.
Our young protagonists begin the final leg of their journey that began with The Girl and the Stars and continued with The Girl and the Mountain. In The Girl and the Moon, they begin the difficult and often separate work of gathering what they need, learning what they must, and confronting those who would stop them. All that hangs in the balance is the fate of their entire world.
I really enjoyed this book. Mark Lawrence builds an amazing world, one with lots of ice and lots of heat. The moon and the stars are tools. In the right hands, the planet thrives. In the wrong hands, the planet burns. Yaz and Thurin are the kids from the wrong side of the planet, but they have decided that they will do what must be done for the good of the whole. Magic and demons and mages, oh my! Time manipulation and ancient wisdom, please. This book packs a lot in (even considering its length) and Lawrence gives his readers a lot of credit for being able to keep the different elements in mind.
This is not at all a complaint, but it is a warning. This book will make MUCH more sense and be much more enjoyable if you have read the other two books first. I read (and reviewed) The Girl and the Stars a few years ago, but missed The Girl and the Mountain. I definitely want to go back and read that – I’m sure this critique is not one that will bother the publishers too much (“No, no, don’t tell people to buy more books from us!”). But without that background from the previous book and with the long gap from the first book, I struggled to keep things straight.
Honestly, if that’s the worst thing I can say about a book (“Buy the whole series”), I must have really liked it. Spoiler alert: I did.
Our thanks to Anne Cater of Random Things Blog Tours for our copy of The Girl and the Moon, given for our participation in this blog tour. The opinions here are solely those of Scintilla. For other views on this novel check out the other bloggers on this tour.
Also see:
Book Review: The Girl and the Stars, Mark Lawrence
Book Review: The Girl and the Moon, Mark Lawrence
Thanks for the blog tour support x