Katsa is a 17-year-old, graced with special killing abilities. In rare cases, certain people in her country can be "graced" with anything - a special, extreme affinity for music or the arts, cooking. They can be mind readers, swimmers or fighters. For Katsa, she has been able to kill with her bare hands when her grace manifested itself when she was a young girl.
Though Katsa is royalty, her uncle, the king, has turned her into his own hired killer. It is on one of her missions that Katsa meets Po, another Graceling, and she is finally able to learn that she has more control of her own destiny than she realizes.
When it comes to finding good books to take on vacation, I am a lot more superficial than usual. I only grabbed "Graceling" because it was one of the thicker books on the YA shelf, and I wanted to get something that would last through the 10 hour day of traveling.
"Graceling" turned out to be one of the best young adult books I've read in a while (up there with Collins' the Hunger Games and Catching Fire). It can be kind of a challenge to find an author or series in the YA genre where plot, narrative and characterization all come together, and I think it does in this one.
And the best part? Cashmore did do a follow-up, "Fire," but it doesn't follow the same lead characters. It only takes place in the same world.
Looking forward to checking it out, soon.
2 comments:
That's funny, I just wrote up reviews of Graceling and Fire for the library website, but haven't had time to put them on my blog. I really liked Graceling a lot. I think if I hadn't liked it so much I would have liked Fire more. If that makes sense. But yeah, KristEn Cashore is good.
Oooh really? See, that is why I am reading Percy Jackson, now. I wanted to wait between reading the two since it is only a quasi-sequel.
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