Graceling
Series: Seven Kingdom, book 1
Pub: 2008, Gollancz
Author: Kristin Cashore
Cat: fantasy
Format: paperback (lar); 340 pp w/ 40
chapters
Age Range: YA
Synopsis
In a world where people born with an
exceptional skill, known as a Grace, are both feared and exploited, Kasta
carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing.
As a
Graced killer who has been able to kill a man with her bare hands from the age
of eight, she’s forced to work as the king’s thug. Feared by the court and
shunned by those her own age, the darkness of her Grace casts a heavy shadow
over Katsa’s life. Yet Katsa remains
defiant, and when the King of Liend’s father is kidnapped she investigates, and
stumbles across a mystery. Who would want to kidnap the old man, and why? And
who was the extraordinary Graced man whose fighting abilities rivalled her own?
The only thing Kasta
is sure of is that she no longer wants to kill. The intrigue surrounding the
kidnapping offers her a way out – and little does she realise, when she takes
it, that something insidious and dark lurks behind the mystery, something
spreading from the shadowy figure of a one eyes king...
With elegant,
evocative prose and a cast of unforgettable characters, debut author Kristin
Cashore creates a mesmerizing world and a death-defying adventure that will
captivate you and leave you wanting more.
Thoughts
This
one is my favourite, and in most ways I don’t understand why others don’t like
it, but then I think maybe they are reading the book as a fantasy which I never
really saw it as one, the world is worked up as well as any other book, but
it’s the people in it, the Graced that are the main points in the book. So
let’s not put it somewhere it isn’t.
It’s
about a time when horses was your main way of transport, and some people where
born with a gift (called a Grace), these could be anything from cooking, to fighting,
to counting numbers... you know, everything
there is out there.
So
Katsa is graced with killing and because of this (and the fact that she outed
herself when she was eight) she is shunned by most and feared by all. Until she
ran into Po, a man that looks her in the eye, and somehow makes her feel like
everyone else.
They
take a trip and fall in love—or were they before, and yeah, I’m leaving out the
good bits, like the plot, why they travelled, why the hell did his grandfather
get kidnapped? And they are all good, and the other half of the book, making me
feel free to talk about the love.
I
love this book, I like that it doesn’t dive too much into the world, that it
isn’t the main point in the thing. I like the characters and the changes they
go through both Kasta with opening herself up to new possibilities in herself
and with Po. And with Po and his own Grace.
Really,
people, it is such a good story that I could go on and on, and yet I’m tongue
tied because of it.
To
me this is more a romance than anything (and that might actually be what it is
and I’m just dumb as shit for not realising it) and it should be read that way,
you should fall in love with the characters, not the world around them, really,
it’s the same as anywhere else.
This
is the book, that from the first time I read it I haven’t stop. I can’t get
enough of it; I can’t stop recommending it to people because it’s just
something I LOVE.
Series
[tb], Fire,
Bitterblue
☼☼☼
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