The Girl and the Stars

The Girl and the Stars is the opening novel of Mark Lawrence's Book of the Ice trilogy, a dark fantasy set on the same dying, red-sun world of Abeth as his Book of the Ancestor series. Where that earlier trilogy stayed among the convents at the planet's heart, this one turns north to the endless ice, where the Ictha and other tribes cling to life in brutal cold and cull any child who cannot pull their weight.

The story follows Yaz, a teenage girl of the Ictha, told in close first person as she is separated from her family and thrown into an underworld of ice-locked ruins, demon-touched children, and technology old enough to look like magic. Lawrence keeps the pace relentless, moving Yaz from one crisis to the next while slowly widening the mystery of the Missing who built the buried city.

Readers drawn to survival-driven fantasy, morally complicated coming-of-age arcs, and Lawrence's signature blend of science and myth will find a strong entry point here.