Grave Mercy book review
Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers Series: His Fair Assassin #1
Published by HMH Books for Young Readers on April 3, 2012
Pages: 565
Goodreads
Why be the sheep, when you can be the wolf?
Seventeen-year-old Ismae escapes from the brutality of an arranged marriage into the sanctuary of the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old. Here she learns that the god of Death Himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts—and a violent destiny. If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as a handmaiden to Death. To claim her new life, she must destroy the lives of others.
Ismae’s most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany—where she finds herself woefully under prepared—not only for the deadly games of intrigue and treason, but for the impossible choices she must make. For how can she deliver Death’s vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?
Grave Mercy should have been a book that I was screaming about from the rooftops. A convent that saves young women and trains them to fight for the Death God and become assassins, does that not sound like something I would love? Yes should be the answer but I feel like this book fell short and I was left feeling a little bored and confused by the storyline. It just needed something else and I really felt it was missing. I did get to the end and appreciate all the politics which is why I rated it as high as I did, but it definitely wasn’t my favourite book.
Writing this review of Grave Mercy, I was still working out why this one didn’t score higher for me. It had everything that I love, assassins, politics and an undercover mission but for some reason, I just couldn’t get behind the story and I think the big reason was the fact that I didn’t fall in love with the characters. There was not one character in Grave Mercy that I found myself rooting for, they were all superficial and I don’t think there was anything particularly interesting about any of them. Even the love interest there was nothing overly brilliant about him just that he was loyal and the big “character flaw” was brushed over and not even that big of a deal. I just couldn’t get behind them and push for them.
I wish Grave Mercy for me would have had more detail on the training processes and how St Mortain worked and the politics of that because for me that was the BEST bit of the book. I loved reading about the different countries and the way the schooling worked. I would have been more than happy to have had an entire book based on that rather than the diluted time frames and action sequences. That was definitely my favourite part of the book!
I think for me the worst bits of Grave Mercy were all based around the time it was set in. The romance and the interactions all the way through this felt stilted, it was as though something would happen that wouldn’t have been okay back then and LaFevers had to then reign it back in. It was as though I was reading whiplash, I would have loved for some of the moments to have gone all the way and push through the boundaries that were put in place, it was just a little jolting. I also think that this is the same issue I had with the ending, I don’t think that I needed a closed ending with it being a series but I was expecting something to click into place.
The jury is out on whether I would recommend Grave Mercy, I don’t know whether I’m going to be continuing on with this series. I have a lot of books on my list to read this year and I’m not sure I enjoyed this book to prioritise these above ALL the other books on my list this year. I will say that there wasn’t anything fundamentally wrong with this book, and if you enjoy books about assassins then you will probably like this one. But for me, the book just wasn’t an enjoyable reading experience.
This book was one of my favourites, I loved the moments that brought all these characters together and I want to find more books that make me feel this way! If you have any recommendations please let me know!
