Holy Sister
core novel 2019 Book of the Ancestor / Book of the Ice
Record
| First published | 2019 |
|---|---|
| Original language |  EN |
| Work type | novel |
| Canon status | core |
| Reader rating | 4.30 (32,535 ratings, collected 2026-09-14) |
| First-edition ISBN | 9781101988916 |
Synopsis
Holy Sister, the third and final novel in the Book of the Ancestor trilogy, opens where Grey Sister left off, as Nona and her companion Zole flee to Zole's ice-bound homeland after recovering a crucial shipheart from the palace of Sherzal, the emperor's sister. The story unfolds across two timelines, one following the girls in the years immediately after that escape and another set three years later, showing Nona and the nuns of Sweet Mercy Convent preparing for the wars that the planet's shrinking habitable Corridor has set in motion. Behind both threads lies the crisis driving the trilogy: the artificial moon meant to hold back Abeth's advancing ice is failing, forcing migration and conflict over the remaining livable land. Nona must find a way to bring the shipheart she recovered into the present timeline while continuing her training toward becoming a full Sister.
Where it sits
- Universe: Book of the Ancestor / Book of the Ice
- Series: Book of the Ancestor core; position 3 of 3 in the series' recorded order
- Author: Mark Lawrence
Notes
- From the series record (Book of the Ancestor): A completed trilogy set on Abeth, a different world from Lawrence's Broken Empire -- explicitly named as a separate continuity at Broken Empire's own admission, confirmed here rather than assumed. Red Sister was a 2018 David Gemmell Legend Award finalist for Best Fantasy Novel, independently corroborated via both Wikipedia and sfadb.com; no individual award record was found for Grey Sister or Holy Sister in either source.
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 Book of the Ancestor: position 3 of 3: previous Grey Sister (2018)
Sources
- Wikipedia: Book of the Ancestor trilogy
- sfadb: Mark Lawrence Awards
- https://bookoftheancestor.fandom.com/wiki/Holy_Sister
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Part of the Library. Fields without an identified source are omitted, never guessed.