Medieval Teenage Assassin Nuns

My high school summer reading list was never like this: in Brittany in the late1400's a young girl escapes from an arranged marriage to a violent lout and is taken in by the Convent of St. Mortain (yes, that is "mort" as in "death") where she is trained as an assassin and then, disguised as a courtesan, sent on missions to save Brittany from the French by poisoning, knifing, and otherwise dispatching villains who've been fingered by Mother Superior.  

My English teacher, Sister St. Sourpuss, would be having a conniption fit, for oh, so many reasons. 

And here's something else to send her into a tailspin: I don't have to lug the book around getting sand and soda pop all over it, I can stick it in my ear, courtesy of Audiobook Sync which pairs a modern Young Adult novel with a classic and distributes them during the summer, courtesy of the publisher's marketeers. I just finished listening to the recent selection blurbed above, Grave Mercy,(Volume 1 of the  His Fair Assassin Trilogy, by Robin LaFevers) which is paired with a full cast recording of Hamlet. 


I know that I often climb aboard my ancient flivver of doom to spew nostalgia all over the 21st century, but here's a case in which things have clearly improved.  Yes, teenage nun assassins are a bit extreme but, hey, this is actually a fairly well-researched historical novel about the court of Anne de Bretagne, and I applaud stories about young women on a high stakes heroine's journey that doesn't end with a date for the prom.  It sure beats the crap out Cherry Ames, Department Store Nurse or Donna Parker, On Her Own which were considered appropriate "free reading" back in the day.  To those gals the mystery of the missing bracelet or a bad hair day were as challenging as it got. As for the assigned summer reading which included such gems as Mrs. Mike, all I can say is who would you rather read about: a bad-ass medieval assassin girl swanning around court in fancy dress  or a Mountie's wife swatting blackflies and rabid raccoons in East Overshoe, Canada? 

Don't tell Sister St. Sourpuss, but I'm off to order the next of His Fair Assassins, Dark Triumph.