Ratings58
Average rating3.5
This came highly recommended by several people... highly recommended enough that I sucked up my general disinterest in medieval-y high fantasy court intrigue type books. And yeah, I definitely enjoyed it! The protagonist, Ismae, is saved from a shitty arranged marriage by being swept away to the convent of St. Mortain, aka Death. Turns out her real dad is Death and she has some cool death powers, such as being immune to poison. She gets trained by the nuns to be a handmaiden of death, aka assassin!! They are on the side of the kingdom of Brittany, and there's a whole lot of stuff about impending war and remaining free of the French (which, correct me if I'm wrong, but it's all futile in actual history, right...?) This tends to be the part I don't super care about in books like this. I don't care about the sanctity of the monarchy. Overthrow them all! Socialism for the people!!
Uh but that's not really Ismae's whole deal, so, whatever, I guess.
Ismae's powers were cool! her budding romance with the duchess's illegitimate bro, who might be a traitor but Ismae's sure he's not b/c he's so totes loyal and dreamy, was kind of creepy to me, to be honest. He's like twice her age and she's been living in a convent forever? Was this supposed to be creepy or romantic? I couldn't tell.
The parts I liked the most were Ismae trying to interpret the signs from Death and reflecting about mortality and loyalty and stuff like that. Some puh-retty profound insights. Also some really interesting content about gender and agency! Maybe a bit anachronistic but WHATEVER.
The parts I liked the least were the blah blah royalty parts, as mentioned above, but for me they were more tolerable than the blah blah royalty parts in other works in a similar vein.
NOW CAN WE TALK ABOUT THE ENDING
CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW DEATH GAVE ISMAE A MAGICAL VAG THAT CURES POISON WHEN SHE GOES TO THE BONEZONE WITH SOMEONE???WHAT THE FUCKKKWHAT IF A LADY GETS POISONED?? CAN SHE CURE POISON WITH CUNNILINGUS?IS SHE GOING TO GO AROUND BONING PEOPLE ON THE BRINK OF DEATH? LIKE HOW OFTEN IS THAT GOING TO COME IN HANDY? CAN ALL THE HANDMAIDENS DO THIS?WHAAAAAAAATTTTalso and unrelatedly, I liked the complexity--that neither the court nor the convent were totally morally just, and Ismae had to figure stuff out for herself. Good job Ismae.