by Kristin Cashore
Official Summary:
If you had the power to kill with your bare hands, what would you do with it?
Graceling takes readers inside the world of Katsa, a warrior-girl in her late teens with one blue eye and one green eye. This gives her haunting beauty, but also marks her as a Graceling. Gracelings are beings with special talents—swimming, storytelling, dancing. Katsa's Grace is considered more useful: her ability to fight (and kill, if she wanted to) is unequaled in the seven kingdoms. Forced to act as a henchman for a manipulative king, Katsa channels her guilt by forming a secret council of like-minded citizens who carry out secret missions to promote justice over cruelty and abuses of power.
Combining elements of fantasy and romance, Cashore skillfully portrays the confusion, discovery, and angst that smart, strong-willed girls experience as they creep toward adulthood. Katsa wrestles with questions of freedom, truth, and knowing when to rely on a friend for help. This is no small task for an angry girl who had eschewed friendships (with the exception of one cousin that she trusts) for her more ready skills of self-reliance, hunting, and fighting. Katsa also comes to know the real power of her Grace and the nature of Graces in general: they are not always what they appear to be.
What the Pros say:
PW: "With this riveting debut, Cashore has set the bar exceedingly high."
Kirkus: "Katsa is an ideal adolescent heroine, simultaneously confident of her strengths yet unsure of her place in the world. . . . In a tale filled with graphic violence and subtle heartbreak, gentle passion and savage kindness, matter-of-fact heroics and bleak beauty, no defeat is ever total and no triumph comes without cost. Grace-full, in every sense."
Tamora Pierce (more on this in a sec): "Here's a WOW of a book! Seeing half-wild Katsa learn humanity as she battles soldiers, storms, and her own obsessive nature--I HAD to know how it ended!"
What I Say:
Growing up, my family took near-weekly trips to the library. The librarians would look curiously, the little girl behind a teetering pile of books that threatened to tumble at any second, but they soon found that I read my pile of books each week and came eagerly back for another. It was on one of these trips, when I was eight or nine years old, that I first discovered Tamora Pierce. I was making my usual rounds through the familiar shelves of the kid section when I spotted a new book in hardback. First Test. I took it home, read it, fell in love. I came back the next week and found myself stacks of books about Alanna and Daine and the worlds Tamora Pierce created. For years, Tamora Pierce was unquestionably my favorite author; I devoured everything she wrote. The first ARC I ever got my hands on was a copy of Lady Knight, given to me by the amazing guy who runs the local indie bookstore in my town (don't worry though, I still went back and bought the hardcover from him when it came out). I loved Tamora Pierce's books because of their strength: strong worlds, strong heroines, strong stories.
I found that strength again while reading Graceling by Kristin Cashore. I'm not sure it would be possible not to love this book. Katsa is a beautifully conflicted character--she hates the Grace that has defined her since childhood, but knows that she will never be without it.
I loved the relationship that grew between Katsa and Po, and that Katsa was able to find a way to love and be loved without feeling that she was submitting herself to someone else's power. I know that there's been a lot of talk about the "anti-marriage" stance portrayed in this book, but I think that the criticisms generally fail to take Katsa's history into account. Katsa doesn't oppose marriage as a general institution, she opposes it for herself as someone who has spent her entire life up to this point living under the authority of a (cruel) man. While there's no chance that Po would turn out to be a husband in any way similar to Katsa's uncle, King Randa, Katsa's hesitance is completely understandable.
Perhaps my favorite thing about this book was the well-crafted world. The seven kingdoms, the Graces, all of it felt incredibly well-developed and real, and the strength of the world building made for an incredibly enjoyable read. This one's a definite keeper for anyone who likes fantasy, romance, action, and adventure. It's the best combination of the four I've read in ages, and it deserves all the accolades it's been receiving.
Intrigued?
Check out the first chapter of Graceling, and get hooked.
More?
Read author Kristin Cashore's great blog and check out interviews with her at Shelf Elf and Book Browse .
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