Characters go from meeting to smooching to plotting coups d’état in what feels like moments. This debut travels at a breakneck pace, covering only the most important events.

If Grace and Fury doesn’t succumb to the infamous series expansions that result in one book spiralling into four and a month’s wait spiralling into several years’, it has the potential to be a fantastic duology. Hopefully, the author will stick to her plan of two books, done and dusted. Change is in the air.įollowing in the well-trodden footsteps of the genre, Grace and Fury chronicles the first sparks of a revolution, social and political. Instead, in ever-optimistic YA tradition, her characters fight back. Tracy Banghart’s world is terrifying, but if you come here expecting a 1984, you will be disappointed: Banghart doesn’t spend one second longer than necessary wallowing in fictional oppression. Their only roles in life are as housewife, domestic servant or factory worker–that is except for a lucky, beautiful few, who are selected to be the Superior’s Graces, glorified concubines epitomising feminine virtue. Welcome to Viridia, a grim nation loosely inspired by Italy where women are forbidden to read, have short hair or disobey whatever orders a man gives them. But that’s exactly what Tracy Banghart has written. Being ambivalent at best about Red Queen, I’d have been skeptical if you told me that a solid mashup of it and The Handmaid’s Tale was possible. What would The Handmaid’s Tale look like set in the world of Red Queen? Whether you care to ask that question or not, Grace and Fury is here with an answer. “Listen, learn, and remember this one thing: Every rule you were ever taught in Viridia–about being quiet, modest, humble, weak–won’t help you here. But Serina is running out of time, imprisoned on an island where she must fight to the death to survive and one wrong move could cost her everything.

A traitor walks the halls of the palace, and deception lurks in every corner. Now trapped in a life she never wanted, Nomi has only one way to save Serina: surrender to her role as a Grace until she can use her position to release her sister. But when her headstrong and rebellious younger sister, Nomi, catches the heir’s eye, it’s Serina who takes the fall for the dangerous secret that Nomi has been hiding. Serina has been groomed her whole life to become a Grace – someone to stand by the heir to the throne as a shining, subjugated example of the perfect woman. In a world where women have no rights, sisters Serina and Nomi Tessaro face two very different fates: one in the palace, the other in prison.

Grace and Fury by Tracy Banghart