Here’s the blurb;
“Only when it’s darkest can you see the stars.
East of the Black Rock, out on the ice, lies a hole down which broken children are thrown
On the vastness of the ice there is no room for individuals. No one survives alone.
To resist the cold, to endure the months of night when even the air itself begins to freeze, requires a special breed. Variation is dangerous, difference is fatal. And Yaz is different.
Torn from her family, from the boy she thought she would spend her life with, Yaz has to carve a new path for herself in a world whose existence she never suspected. A world full of danger.
Beneath the ice, Yaz will learn that Abeth is older and stranger than she had ever imagined.
She will learn that her weaknesses are another kind of strength. And she will learn to challenge the cruel arithmetic of survival that has always governed her people.
Only when it’s darkest can you see the stars.”
The Girl and the Stars is set on the same world as The Book of the Ancestor, and I’m aware that there are many more stories that need to be told to fully understand Abeth. Not that new readers can’t pick up from here. There is no need to have read The Books of the Ancestors.
I’ve heard a great deal about The Girl and the Stars on twitter and I was looking forward to reading it. The story starts strongly and Yaz is an enjoyable character to read about. The set up of the story is intriguing and not at all where I expected it to go. Foolishly, I thought I knew where Lawrence was going with this new trilogy. There are many fascinating elements and I was really enjoying exploring the landscape of ‘the stars,’
Lawrence titillates with fragments of what’s actually happening and what’s happened in the past (he’s a bit good at this) but I found I wanted to know more about that, and less about Yaz and her group of friends. And by the time I was a decent distance into the book, I was beginning to suffer from the same sensory deprivation as the characters. This probably isn’t a good thing. My enjoyment of the story did drop away – the relentless pacing couldn’t quite make up for my lessening enjoyment, and while the ending is bloody stunning, I can’t help but think it could have been reached at least a hundred pages earlier!
I’m still very much looking forward to reading all the books in this new trilogy, but hopefully, they won’t share the same setting!
Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for my review copy.
The Girl and the Stars is available in ebook now and hardback from next week. You can snap up a copy from here:
M J Porter 
2 thoughts on “Book Review – The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence – fantasy”