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. Knowing that the survivors will have become monsters to punish 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. More brutal than being an orphaned kitchen boy or a bastard second son. More brutal than a fantasy hero’s backstory. 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, a brutal realism and moral ambiguity all combined with a goal that is simply an attempt for 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 was reading about them.
This 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 things happen but it is love that is guiding things through…mostly. With ‘The Daughter Of Crows’, I had to wonder if any of the characters, even minor ones, had good lives. Maybe Rue’s fellow villagers before they were mown down enjoyed the simple pleasures of subsistence living. 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 that mankind fled to where they are now. Hints in the fact that many familiar religions continue. 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 sub-plot 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 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/