Rue is on old woman who was once a member of the Academy of Kindnesses, an organization of women who are human avatars of the vengeance-minded Furies. When a raiding party kills her entire village (including herself!), she is duty-bound to seek revenge on behalf of her murdered friends. The novel rotates between three story threads: one of old-age Rue's vengeance quest and two of her younger years before and during her time as an acolyte at the Academy. The time-displaced narrative maximizes the twisty, shock-fueled storytelling that Lawrence is known for. Another hallmark of his writing is bone-crushing, blood-splattering violence, and there is no shortage of it here. A great writer is one who understands why his readers are showing up to the party.
The survivor of a brutal academy must exhume her own past in the first book in a new series from the international bestselling author of the Library Trilogy and the Broken Empire series.
Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a monster to punish monsters.
The Academy of Kindness exists to create agents of retribution, cast in the image of the Furies—known as the kindly ones—against whom even the gods hesitate to stand. Each year a hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three will emerge.
The Academy’s halls run with blood. The few that survive its decade-long nightmare have been forged on the sands of the Wound Garden. They have learned ancient secrets amid the necrotic fumes of the Bone Garden. They leave its gates as avatars of vengeance, bound to uphold the oldest of laws.
Only the most desperate would sell their child to the Kindnesses. But Rue … she sold herself. And now, a lifetime later, a long and bloody lifetime later, just as she has discovered peace, war has been brought to an old woman’s doorstep.
That was a mistake.
The series
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