Daughter Of Crows (The Academy Of Kindness book 1) by Mark Lawrence (book review).

The three Furies punish the gods for their crimes. In the ancient past, humanity sinned so well that the Fates came to earth to punish man. Alecto, unceasing in her anger. Tisiphone, she who avenges. Megaera, keeper of grudges. The Furies left a legacy behind when they returned to the heavens, the Academy of Kindness. Each year desperate families sell a hundred daughters to the Academy, knowing that only three in each class will survive their training. They understand that the survivors will have transformed into monsters themselves, tasked with punishing other monsters.

Rue is different. She sold herself to the Academy to escape. Decades later, just as she had found peace in her old age, someone brings war to her doorstep. They will regret it.

I have a theory that fantasy novel heroines have to have a brutal early life. Rue’s early life was more brutal than that of an orphaned kitchen boy or a bastard second son. Her backstory is more brutal than that of a fantasy hero. Rue is so desperate to escape her old life that she sold herself as a pre-teen to a cult with 3:100 odds of surviving to adulthood. Her story is not one of redemption and triumph but one of brutal and bloody revenge. That’s it. Straight, no chaser. Nothing to blunt the edges. This is a novel I would definitely define as grimdark: a cynical and hopeless atmosphere, brutal realism, and moral ambiguity, all combined with a goal that is simply an attempt at one tiny victory in a sea of blood and chaos.

As traumatic as Rue’s story is, it sucked me in. Like watching an aesthetically styled car wreck, I couldn’t look away. The writing brings Rue’s world into stark reality that makes some gruesome things completely logical while I am reading about them.

This approach is consistent with Mark Lawrence’s writing intriguing worlds like the ‘Library Trilogy’, starting with ‘The Book That Wouldn’t Burn’, but what stuck with me here is the utter grimness. In the ‘Library Trilogy’, terrible events occur, but love primarily guides the narrative. With ‘The Daughter Of Crows’, I had to wonder if any of the characters, even minor ones, had positive lives. Perhaps Rue’s fellow villagers experienced the simple joys of subsistence living before their demise.

The best that can be hoped for is a bloody revenge and a balancing of the scales of the oldest laws. I don’t foresee any level of happy ending approaching, but I was sucked in. There are hints at a distant past that might be something like our modern day and reasons why mankind fled to where they are now. Hints in the fact that many familiar religions continue to exist. How did things get like this? Is this a post-nuclear story, or perhaps I’ve just read too many dystopian novels?

‘Daughter of Crows’ is a wonderful read, but be warned, this book is brutal. The book is grim and in no way nice. If you are expecting a high fantasy with a plucky heroine, you are going to be sorely disappointed. Rue doesn’t have pluck; Rue has bloody-minded crankiness and years of even bloodier training that drag her through her quest. Do not start this book expecting a romance subplot or anything remotely cheerful.

There is no power of friendship here. No prophecy to bring the promised land. This book is definitely grimdark, even if our heroine is not fighting for survival. Full of hopelessness and brutal realism, ‘The Daughter Of Crows’ is for fans of the darker side of fantasy, where no knights in shining armour exist to save anyone. If you liked the atmosphere of ‘The Black Company’ by Glenn Cook, try ‘The Daughter of Crows’.

LK Richardson

March 2026

(pub: Ace, 2026. 416 page hardback. Price: $30.00 (US), £18.99 (UK). ISBN: 978-0-59381-894-7).

check out website: www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/763786/daughter-of-crows-by-mark-lawrence/