Daughter of Crows by Mark Lawrence

Author : Mark Lawrence

Book : Daughter of Crows

/ Fantasy /

/ The Kindness Academy Book 1 /

Publication date : March 26, 2026

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Blurb:

The survivor of a brutal academy must exhume her own past in the first book in a new series from the international bestselling author of the Library Trilogy and the Broken Empire series.

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—known as the kindly ones—against whom even the gods hesitate to stand. Each year a hundred girls are sold to the Academy. Ten years later only three will emerge.

The Academy’s halls run with blood. The few that 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.

My thoughts:

Okay, I'm out of superlatives because Mark Lawrence strikes again with an absolutely splendid story in Daughter of Crows!

The cover is exquisite, and I couldn't take my eyes off it from the moment I saw it😍

Masterfully weaving the story like a spider, perfectly using all POVs and times as threads that connect at some point or other, just enough to keep you hungry for more. Until it all collides into one intricate web, where you are familiar with all the threads representing the events and emotions that led you to that point where everything makes sense.

A merciless place, The Academy of Kindness takes girls who are sold and forges them into weapons of revenge against injustice. After ten years of bloody survival, only three will leave alive, with all the secrets they've learned there making them the perfect avatars of vengeance. Rue - one of our main characters - is one of the many girls there... but the difference is that while the others were sold by their families, she sold herself.

Gripping, bloody, and a brilliant take on necromancy that I loved.

It gave me John Wick vibes, especially that part with the pencil in the action scenes😂😈

I liked Rue and her complex character, a tender heart wrapped in tenacity, sharp edges, and unrelenting will.

But to be honest, Sharp, with her fiery temper and devil-may-care attitude, was my absolute favourite character.

I feel that the book only scratched the surface of the enormous potential of this world, and to say I'm curious to learn more about Rue and her world is an understatement.