Graceling by Kristin Cashore

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


I'm such a reading spaz. I started this book to get my mind off another book I was reading (Michelle Knight's Finding Me: A Decade of Darkness...) and got about 200 or so pages in. Then other books came along and this one fell off my radar. That isn't to say this wasn't an incredibly engrossing story, because it was. Well, anyway, I finally got back to it yesterday and finished it up early this evening.

I picked up this book after searching for "fantasy books with strong female characters" and came across this list: http://bestfantasybooks.com/top25-fan.... When I saw that the list included the Hero and the Crown, I immediately felt it must be a reliable list. So did it live up to this expectation? Heck yeah! Katsa is so badass, it just warmed my poor heart. And Captain Faun? Loved her!

My favorite thing was the pacing. Things got going very quickly in this story. It was very well executed. Each chapter ends on a cliff hanger, so it is a very difficult book to put down. I meant to take my time with finishing it, and kept telling myself just one chapter more and until suddenly it was over.

As for the concept of the graces. That was so incredible. I remember everyone I gave the summary of this story to became very interested in the story. It made me wonder what my grace would be if I lived in this world. Leck's grace truly frightened me. It would be very awful for anyone to have that much influence over others.

Ah, how I loved Po. And Po and Katsa. Sigh. The romance was absolutely lovely. It wasn't over-the-top or annoying at all. Very natural how the two of them grew close. And I love friends-to-lovers stories so much!

I would have enjoyed this much much more at a younger age, but that didn't detract from my reading experience at all. Here's a bit of a sample of the prose:

"It took more than the thinking of one night. They moved through the Sunderan forest, and they talked and rested and made camp as before. But their silences were perhaps a bit less easy than they had been; and Katsa broke off occasionally, to keep her own company and think in solitude. They did not practice fighting, for Katsa was shy of his touch. And he didn't press it upon her. He pressed nothing upon her, even conversation, even his gaze."

Overall, this was a fun, light YA fantasy read. Very great for me as it served its purpose in cleansing my reading palate between books. I would recommend it to anyone, though teens would probably enjoy it best. Will I be reading the next book in the trilogy? Absolutely!



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