

Set a thief to catch a thief. Set a monster to punish monsters. The Academy of Kindness exists to create agents of retribution, cast in the image of the Furies – The Kindly Ones – against whom even the gods hesitate to stand. Each year one hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three emerge. The Academy’s halls run with blood. The few who survive its decade-long nightmare have been forged on the sands of the Wound Garden. They have learned ancient secrets amid the necrotic fumes of the Bone Garden. They leave its gates as avatars of vengeance, bound to uphold the oldest of laws. Only the most desperate would sell their child to the Kindnesses. But Rue … she sold herself. And now, a lifetime later, a long and bloody lifetime later, just as she has discovered peace, war has been brought to an old woman’s doorstep. That was a mistake.
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Character
Grave, classical in form, bleak and earnest.
- gravecomic
- classical in formformally daring
- warmbleak
- earnestironic
- cooloverwhelming
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About the book
- Author
- Mark Lawrence
- First published
- 2026
- Pages
- 384
- Publisher
- HarperCollins Publishers
- Editions
- 1
- Language
- English
- ISBN
- 9780008696108
Where to read
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Mark Lawrence was born in 1966, in the United States. While he was still young, his parents moved to the United Kingdom. Lawrence has a degree in physics and holds a PhD in mathematics. He is married and has four children. Lawrence is the primary carer of his disabled child Celyn, and for this reason he does not travel to promote his books or attend conventions. He works as a novelist and was a research scientist in the field of artificial intelligence. He has held secret level clearance with both US and UK governments. Since 2015, Lawrence operates the annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off, a literary contest intended to bring greater visibility to self-published English-language fantasy a
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