Shelly's Book Blog

Graceling is Kristin Cashore's first novel. It is also one of the fiction titles on School Library Journal's Best Books 2008 list. This is a fantasy novel set in a land of seven kingdoms where some people are born with special skills called graces. People who know Katsa's grace fear her because she seems to have the grace of killing. Her king shamelessly makes use of her in order to bully people, sending her on missions to hurt and even kill people who have displeased and/or disobeyed him. Then Katsa meets Po, who is the prince of a neighboring kingdom, and they set out on a journey in hopes of solving the mystery of his grandfather's kidnapping.

I was drawn into the story quickly and overall I liked it, but I felt that the book kind of dragged toward the middle. I think it may have been that Katsa's abilities were so incredible, so advanced and seemingly infallible, that I really didn't think there was any possibility of her failing in her mission. Or maybe I've just been reading too much fantasy lately. Overall, though, I would recommend this book to tweens and teens. It's long (almost 500 pages), though, so most readers will need to be both avid readers and fantasy fans.