Grave Mercy
core novel 2012 His Fair Assassin
Record
| First published | 2012 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 3.89 (99,961 ratings, collected 2026-08-24) |
| Page count | 549 |
| First-edition ISBN | 9780547628349 |
Synopsis
Opening the His Fair Assassin trilogy, Grave Mercy is set in a fictionalized fifteenth-century Brittany resisting absorption into France. Ismae Rienne, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl marked from birth by a scar left after her mother's failed attempt to abort her, is feared and shunned in her village for the mark. After escaping a forced marriage, she is taken in by the convent of St. Mortain, dedicated to the god of Death, where she discovers she carries unusual gifts, including immunity to poison and the ability to sense the dying. Trained by the convent as an assassin acting on Mortain's will, Ismae is sent on her first mission into the ducal court, tasked with working undercover to protect the young Duchess Anne of Brittany, even as she begins to develop feelings for Gavriel Duval, the duchess's own half-brother.
Where it sits
- Universe: His Fair Assassin
- Series: His Fair Assassin core; position 1 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Robin LaFevers
Notes
- From the series record (His Fair Assassin): Each novel follows a different daughter of the convent of Saint Mortain in an alternate-history medieval Brittany; read as one continuous trilogy rather than three independent standalones.
Neighbouring works
Publication order and internal chronology are tracked as two separate orderings and are never conflated: a book's place in one says nothing about its place in the other.
- Publication order, within the series His Fair Assassin: position 1 of 3: next Dark Triumph (2013)
Sources
← His Fair Assassin dossier · All universes
Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.