Grave Mercy

Grave Mercy, by Robin LaFevers

Escaping from the brutality of an arranged marriage, seventeen year-old Ismae finds sanctuary at the convent of St. Mortain, where the sisters still serve the gods of old.  Here she learns that the god of Death himself has blessed her with dangerous gifts - and a  violent destiny.  If she chooses to stay at the convent, she will be trained as an assassin and serve as handmaiden to Death.  To claim her new life, she must be willing to take the lives of others.

Ismae's most important assignment takes her straight into the high court of Brittany, where she must pose as mistress to the darkly mysterious Gavriel Duval, who has fallen under a cloud of suspicion.  Once there, she finds herself woefully underprepared - not only for the deadly games of love and intrigue, but for the impossible choices she must make.  For how can she deliver Death's vengeance upon a target who, against her will, has stolen her heart?

So Grave Mercy has gotten quite a few good reviews, and I guess I am a little hard pressed to say why. It's fine, don't get me wrong, but it's not a miracle of writing, and there are quite a few things I really didn't enjoy about it.  It begins with Ismae's very short-lived marriage (which, since I'm pretty sure she never gets divorced, means she's still married throughout the book.  Which: odd).  Soon enough, her new husband discovers that she has some serious scar/birthmark issues going on, and decides that she needs to be burned at the stake - I get that the birthmark means that the god of Death is her father, but why that is such a huge problem is not really ever explained.  So the local herbwitch smuggles her out to the convent where she can accept her destiny as La Femme Nikita, 1485-style, or marry some random guy.  Hmm, tough decision.

So in the convent she finds out that she is immune to poison, and I am already sensing that the Mary Sue is strong with this one.  It's a feeling that lasts much longer than it should, considering.  She meets some other novitiates, trains up, and goes out on her first assignment, and let me tell you, this girl thinks she is hot shit.  I don't know what kind of brainwashing they do at the convent, but there is way too much of "Kill first, ask questions later" for Ismae to be as confident as she is.  She's on her first assignment!  Which she almost screws up.  I don't care how much you train, when you go out into the real world and are expected to produce results for the first time, you get nervous.  And I think it's flaw in the character that she's not nervous - it makes her seem stupid, for not being nervous, and it makes her harder to relate to. 

The second place I got tripped up at is when she gets sent out with this Gavriel Duval guy on assignment.  Why this chick gets sent out with him is beyond me.  She has gone on a total of two (2) assignments, both of which she very narrowly avoided botching, and, as we discover later, she is both unprepared for real world scenarios, and totally susceptible to deeply wounded backstories.  It would make sense if (PLOT SPOILERS UP AHEAD) as we discover later, Crunard's master plan involves somehow using a novitiate assassin as some sort of  scape goat.  But he's not, as far as I can tell.  Why the abbess didn't insist on sending someone with a) more experience and b) more loyalty to the convent, I just don't know.  I understand that Crunard was the bad guy, and he was using the abbess as well, but it's kind of like, either she totally trusts Crunard, which, since we're told to suspect anyone else, I don't know why he would be above suspicion, or she doesn't, in which case, she needs to tell Ismae to watch out for everyone.  By not uniting against Crunard, the only thing the convent accomplished is alienating Ismae, who, although probably not their star pupil, still represents a significant amount of time and energy spent molding her into this ninja assassin. 

Do not even get me started on the poisons and the weapons.

Plus, I could not figure out if this convent is supposed to be well-known, secret, or what?  Like, I am so sure that the court of Brittany just allows these ladies to train young women as killers. VERY PLAUSIBLE.  And yet, everyone seems to know what the convent of St. Mortain means.  So, I guess, that like, no one is concerned that there's a gaggle of assassins running around? And no one thinks it would be a good idea to maybe...send them off to kill a bunch of people in France?  I guess I'm just confused about this whole target thing, which may end up being better explained in later books: if the god is picking targets, why is he so focused on like, state politics?  I understand that apparently a free Brittany = continued worship, but (1) that doesn't even sound like it's right, since the new duchess of Brittany totally says that Mortain is a saint, not a god, implying that the leader of Brittany doesn't support the old gods as is anyhow, and (2) I would think that just knowing that there's a pack of wild young ladies avenging wrongs in the name of Mortain would be enough to make people leery of not doing their best to stay on his good side. And if he's not picking targets, then why the visions and the marque and all that? It just feels very thin.

Okay, and before I try to temper this review with why the book is "fine", I want to get one more thing out of my system: lack of humor.  I mean, this book needs some levity, and it doesn't even have to be like, Ismae cracking out wicked bad puns after she kills someone, a la James Bond.  I just mean, like, banter, or something a little bit to relieve the unending tension. 

Okay: things I liked: I enjoyed the idea that there was a closeness between the three new novitiates, although honestly, it was more of a tell than a show.  Because the book necessarily skips quite a bit of training time, I feel like the scenes in which Annith, Ismae, and Sybella really bond get left by the wayside.  I mean, we see Ismae talk Sybella off the ledge (figuratively and literally) and then the next thing we know, Sybella's been off on a month's long assignment, and while I did get a sense that the three were close, I felt that part could have been stronger.  (So it's a back handed compliment, so what?) 

I also liked how the book ended - given that there are, as I said, three new novitiates, and this is a planned trilogy, I don't think I'm reaching too far to say that each book will center on one of them.  The next one is Sybella, I believe.  So Grave Mercy did a good job of wrapping up Ismae's story line and getting her to a place of, if not absolute resolution, at least temporary resting so that we can look in on the other girls and see how they're doing.  I am intrigued by the other two ladies, and while it's never a good idea to want to know more about a secondary character than the primary one, it does at least bode well for follow-up books.

So it's a fairly standard book, not offensive, but the focus on the relationship between Gavriel and Ismae to the detriment of world-building is both a strength and a weakness: strength in the sense that there are many questions and avenues for the next two books, weak in the sense that you just get a sense of absurdity  and implausibility about some of it. And in a world where fourteen year old girls get sent to assassin training school in medieval France, you need to ensure you keep as much plausibility as you can or else the whole thing is a three ring circus.