Book review and #BlogTour #RandomThingsTours @annecater – The Girl and The Stars by Mark Lawrence (4 stars)

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Title: The Girl and the Stars (Book of the Ice #1)

Author: Mark Lawrence

Published: 30th April 2020 – Harper Voyager

Format: Ebook – 480 pages

“But I’ve been given something I never knew I wanted. Not these caves, but the possibility of change. The idea that I have no idea what my life will be tomorrow, or next year.” – The Girl and the Stars

Hello Hello! How are you?

I’m so thrilled to be bringing you this wonderful #RandomThingsTours hosted by Anne Cater for The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence. As soon as I got the email about this book, I knew I wanted to read it and I’m so happy that I got the chance. Thank you so much to Anne for letting me take part in the tour. Keep reading for my thoughts on The Girl and the Stars.

GOODREADS SYNOPSIS

In the ice, east of the Black Rock, there is a hole into which broken children are thrown.

On Abeth the vastness of the ice holds no room for individuals. Survival together is barely possible. 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 not the same.

Yaz is torn from the only life she’s ever known, away from her family, from the boy she thought she would spend her days with, and has to carve out a new path for herself in a world whose existence she never suspected. A world full of difference and mystery and danger.

Yaz learns that Abeth is older and stranger than she had ever imagined. She learns that her weaknesses are another kind of strength. And she learns to challenge the cruel arithmetic of survival that has always governed her people. Only when it’s darkest you can see the stars.

MY REVIEW

When I first got the email from Anne about this book, I knew I wanted to read it. I love all things fantasy and the blurb sounded so interesting and very unique. I’m so glad that I decided to read this book and take part in the tour because it was a very pleasant surprise.

This book is set in Abeth, a land covered in ice for thousands and thousands of miles, on which live 4 different tribes of people. Every four years they have to go to a gathering and at this gathering, the “broken” among the children are thrown into a pit in the ground. We first meet our main character, Yaz, on her journey to this gathering. She knows that she is broken and that she will be pushed into the pit. That doesn’t happen, but after a big turn of events, she ends up in the pit looking for her brother. We didn’t get much of an insight about the world above the pit because most of the story happens inside the “pit”.

I really liked everything we learned about the pit because it seemed very much like the place in which Dauntless hide in the Divergent books. It had the same primitive and survival feel to it.

We learn a lot about Yaz really quicky. She is very strong-willed, she is very well developed and I instantly liked her. There are a lot of other characters in this book too, the main ones are Erris, Quell and Thurin. Yaz has a different relationship which each of these male characters and each is very unique. The main thing I liked about this book is that we don’t get any romance, we get some hints of “wanting to be in a relationship”, but we don’t get any romance at all and I really liked having a plot solely about the characters and what was happening around them.

This story is really unique and I don’t think I’ve ever read a fantasy quite like it. It’s a long first book in the series, but it is absolutely jam-packed with world-building, character-building, information about the world, and plot twists that I wasn’t expecting. The chapters did tend to drag towards the end because they were all quite long, but I really liked the pacing of this book.

MY THOUGHTS AND RATING

Overall, I really enjoyed this book and there was so much going on that I’m pretty sure I’m going to need to reread it before the next book in the series comes out. I have always wanted to read Mark Lawrence’s books, I’ve heard such great stuff about his series and now I know that they are true.

It did take me a bit of time to get into this book, I was expecting the writing to be quite flowery and whimsical, but it was actually quite down to earth and simple, but not a bad type of simple. I think the writing style went hand in hand with the actual plot and the complexity of it and it really helped to bring this story and its characters together. As I said, the chapters did tend to drag a bit and at a few points, I lost track of things, especially with Erris’s character because he still seemed cloaked in mystery and some things didn’t really click together in my head about him.

I gave this book 4 stars and I have to say that this is a really solid first book in a series. I knew I was going to like it, but I really appreciate how unique this book is and I’m definitely going to be picking up more books by this author.

Thank you once again to Anne, Mark and Harper Voyager for letting me take part in this tour and for sending me the book. All opinions are my own.

That’s all for now, I hope you liked this post, see you soon, stay safe,

Ellie xx

ABOUT THE AUTHOR – MARK LAWRENCE

Mark Lawrence was born in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, but moved to the UK at the age of one. He went back to the US after taking a PhD in mathematics at Imperial College to work on a variety of research projects including the ‘Star Wars’ missile defence programme. Returning to the UK,
he has worked mainly on image processing and decision/reasoning theory. His first trilogy, The Broken Empire, has been universally acclaimed as a ground-breaking work of fantasy, and both The Liar’s Key and The Wheel of Osheim have won the Gemmell Legend award for best fantasy novel. Mark is married, with four children, and lives in Bristol.

If you would like to purchase this book, you can find it here: Amazon UK (affiliate link) – Amazon FR (affiliate link) – The Book Depository (affiliate link) – Audible FR (affiliate link) – Amazon US – Waterstones – Barnes and Noble – Audible UK – Kobo