The Girl and the Stars by Mark Lawrence (The Book of the Ice: Book 1)

A frozen ice planet called Abeth. A house that Nona and the Sweet Mercy convent sisters called home many years ago. It is now only inhabited by roving ice tribes that are battling to survive in the most extreme circumstances imaginable.

It takes sacrifice to survive. Outliers need to be removed. You can no longer live in the tribe if you are weak and fall behind, too big or strong and consume more than the typical share. You are abandoned and ejected from your house and loved ones for good. Our teen protagonist, Yaz, finds herself in this situation at the beginning of the novel, and we follow her descent into a merciless world of peril, mystery, magic, science fiction, politics, terror, and so much more.

More information might ruin some of the fun, but I will say that the story defied easy classification because it invented a brand-new genre. You get to decide what to label it. Icepunk? Yes, of course. The fact that Lawrence is getting better with with new novel is not breaking news. Since years past, we have known this. But compared to what we’re used to from him, this is a different kind of story. It has a pulse, a drive, and an ever-increasing gearshift.

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It was revealed that Lawrence has been subtly building a shared world of his works for a long time, something that was originally hinted to in The Broken Empire and continued through The Red Queen’s War and The Book of the Ancestor. What else might the Yaz-mere experience in the future? Two separate series from two different eras are already available to us. We may be able to add to the legend of one or more mystery races in a third period of time. I’m getting ahead of myself, though. That’s how this book is making me feel. It’s inspiring crazy theories and making me incredibly eager for what’s next. It’s that kind of book.

Each each chapter became better and better. This book provides answers to many of the queries I had when reading The Book of the Ancestor series. It was obvious how meticulously the scenes were constructed, and it all flowed beautifully. There were new powers, new places, new threats, new characters to love and hate, themes and questions carried over from Nona’s story, a tonne of new riddles to unravel. There was something breath-taking in almost every chapter.

More than just the beginning of a new series, The Girl and the Stars. It represents the culmination of some of Lawrence’s strongest concepts from his earlier works while also signalling that even more incredible things are yet to come. I can’t wait to get my hands on the upcoming Yaz-mere Icepunk book.