The Girl and the Mountain by Mark Lawrence
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On the planet Abeth there is only the ice. And the Black Rock.
For generations the priests of the Black Rock have reached out from their mountain to steer the fate of the ice tribes. With their Hidden God, their magic and their iron, the priests’ rule has never been questioned. But when ice triber Yaz challenged their authority, she was torn away from the only life she had ever known, and forced to find a new path for herself.
Yaz has lost her friends and found her enemies. She has a mountain to climb, and even if she can break the Hidden God’s power, her dream of a green world lies impossibly far to the south, across a vast emptiness of ice. Before the journey can even start, she has to find out what happened to the ones she loves and save those that can be saved.
Abeth holds its secrets close, but the stars shine brighter for Yaz and she means to unlock the truth.
After loving The Girl and the Stars I just had to pick up the second book in the Book of Ice Series. The good thing is the book continues off straight after the cliffhanger of the first book, so you’re straight back into the story and excited to know more. If you’re reading them straight after one another this is great, however I’m personally thankful that Lawrence adds a Story So Far section to remind me of what happened in the first book that I’d read the year before.
Half the book takes places in and around the Black Rock, with each of our characters having different adventures. Yaz who was our main character from The Girl and the Stars, is still the central point for pulling these characters together. The bond they have is amazingly written and expanded on as the story goes on. I love that Yaz is often the leader of the group, but she makes decisions that aren’t always the best and learns and adapts from that.
Another POV we get in this book is Thurin, who is someone born underground and has never seen the ice before. With him coming to the surface with Yaz, we have a completely different perspective to life on Abeth and the ice. This contrasts with Yaz’s stubborn determination to survive in the cold temperatures, and it also shows how the others react to his experience of having to survive in a different environment.
There’s many other characters throughout who you love to know more about. Quell, the Ichta warrior that Yaz grew up with joins the journey from the first book. Erris, the thousand year old mind put into a robot body to join Yaz. And even Zox, the mechanical dog. For some reason I kept picturing him as K9 from Doctor Who… but I don’t think that’s quite right.
In terms of antagonists, Theus, who was the main villain in the first book is still around, but we start to meet and hear more about some of the bigger dangers in Abeth. I found some of the priests to be particularly formiddable for our characters, and the undercities still had minds of their own.
Thematically there’s a strong emphasis on the fight for survival everyday in harsh climates like on the ice, which also acts as another adversary. Although this is tougher for some characters more than others. The situations they’re put in also means our characters make tough decisions for themselves and others which shows character growth whilst expanding on the world we’re in.
My only concern when reading the book was at the halfway mark where a thing happened, and it felt like it was very slow paced for a while. This, for me, made it harder for me to want to pick up as the change was drastic and then slow. However, once you push through that section it does get a lot more interesting and I was excitedly reading to the end.
There’s a strong connection to The Book of the Ancestor series, but not enough that you would need to read that first. I’ve also heard from others there are some easter eggs for other books Lawrence has written, and so I’ll have to pick them up at some point too.
Another strong cliffhanger, and I can’t wait to pick up the next and final book in the trilogy. Overall The Girl and the Mountain pulls the fantasy threads into a more SFF direction, with some sci-fi elements being more and more important to the story.
Positives of The Girl and the Mountain
- Character development of a wide range of characters
- Strong world building that adds to previous book and series
Negatives of The Girl and the Mountain
- Some slower paced areas
I received The Girl and the Mountain by Mark Lawrence from the publisher, HarperVoyager. This is an unbiased and honest review
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