Mark Lawrence

Lawrence worked as a research scientist on a long-running defence project, in the United States and then in Bristol, and wrote fantasy in the evenings. Prince of Thorns opens with a fourteen-year-old prince leading a band of murderers and refusing redemption, which split readers sharply over whether the book endorses him. The Book of the Ancestor trilogy, Grey Sister and Holy Sister among it, follows girls trained as fighters inside a convent. He has written publicly about caring for a daughter with profound disabilities.