Module 8: Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Book Summary: In the Graceling Realm, there are people that "Graced" with certain skills or powers. Katsa was Graced with killing. She can kill anyone with just her own hands. As she is niece to the king, he uses her and her power to kill and keep people in line. When the father of a king goes missing, she begins to investigate who and why someone would kidnap him. Along the way, she meets Po, who is Graced with combat skills. It's on this journey that she learns the truth behind her own Grace.

APA Citations: Cashore, K. (2008). Graceling. New York, NY: Harcourt.

Impressions: This book has made it to the top of my favorites list. It's different in the premise, has amazing world building, well-developed characters, and a villain that is terrifying (spoiler alert: he only gets more terrifying in the other books, IMO).

I usually enjoy fantasy and science fiction books but I can be a little picky about them. I expect the world-building to be well done. I want to be able to close my eyes and picture the scenery, the clothing, the customs, and the culture. I want to feel like I have entered a new world and am exploring it along with the characters. Graceling does not disappoint. I loved discovering the different parts of the land and what Katsa's life was like. I don't think it's too high fantasy that beginning fantasy readers would feel as if there is too much going on but it hooks both new and fantasy aficionados in.

Katsa is an incredibly strong character. Both literally--with the grace of killing--and figuratively. I love reading about strong female characters that are trying to make their place in the world. Katsa is flawed in some ways--like her fears of trusting others and tendency to take everything seriously--but I was swooning in several scenes between Katsa and Po.

This is a great read that is quick to capture the reader and will have them wanting more once they've finished it.

Professional Review: In a world of gossip girls, it is perhaps refreshing to have a teenage heroine who cuts off all her hair because it gets in her way; and Kristin Cashore’s eccentric and absorbing first novel, “Graceling,” has such a heroine. Katsa is tough, awkward, beautiful and consumed by pressing moral issues. She is extremely serious; it could be said she lacks a sense of humor.
The story is set in a rich fantasy world where children born with extreme talents, called Graces, are “Gracelings.” These Grace­lings occupy a vexed and complicated place in their kingdoms, as they are both shunned and respected by ordinary people and exploited by kings. Katsa’s Grace happens to be murder.

She can kill a man with her bare hands. This peculiar talent is discovered when, as an 8-year-old, she accidentally kills a distant cousin who is leering at women servants and touching them. Her uncle, the king, recognizes the potential of Katsa’s power and begins to train her. He turns his niece into his creature, his own private girl assassin, forcing her to do the dirty work of the court: wreaking vengeance on his enemies, subduing those who dare to defy him. As one might expect, the adult world in “Graceling” is irrational, whimsical, cruel — the young people band together into a secret Council, which Katsa dreams up to protect the innocent and correct the sins of narcissistic kings. 

Katsa comes from the tradition of heroines like Pippi Longstocking, who scandalize the adult world with impossible feats of physical strength like lifting a horse or fighting a pirate. Katsa gets into a brawl with a mountain lion and wins. She subdues an entire army of guards. In other words, she overturns every biological reality and cultural stereotype of feminine weakness, which is a large part of her charm. She is the girl’s dream of female power unloosed. 

On one of her secret missions, Katsa encounters another Grace­ling, Prince Po, who can read minds. He also happens to be extremely handsome. After a great deal of wrang­ling, Katsa finally frees herself from her tyrannical uncle, and together she and Po try to save his young cousin Princess Bitterblue from her pathologically insane father, King Leck, who is in possession of a dangerous and bewildering Grace. Many harrowing adventures ensue. 

There is a touching ordinariness to these characters as they go about their work breaking arms and legs. Unable to fall asleep one night, Katsa “listened to make sure no one woke. Normal. She wasn’t normal.” As in every self-respecting fantasy story, all the good characters, the ones we’re supposed to like, are freaks and outcasts. Po admits: “I do a decent job of folding myself into normal society, when I must. But it’s an act, Katsa; it’s always an act. . . . When I’m in my father’s city there’s a part of me that’s simply waiting until I can travel again. Or return to my own castle, where I’m left alone.” 

In the course of her dark and eventful tale, Cashore plays with the idea of awkwardness, how at a certain age gifts and talents are burdens, how they make it impossible to feel comfortable in the world. And in this she writes a fairly realistic portrait of teenage life into the baroque courts of her outlandish kingdoms.
There is also embedded in this adventure a tempestuous love story; it begins with the two Gracelings fighting, and the anger that flows between them is as interesting as the attraction. They train together, as both are gifted in physical combat. And somehow in all of this struggle and resistance Cashore offers an acute portrayal of sexual awakening: ambivalent, rageful, exhilarating, wistful in turns. 

At one point Katsa thinks of herself as a “vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger.” In many respects “Grace­ling” is a study of mysterious angers: it offers a perfect parable of adolescence, as its characters struggle with turbulent emotions they must learn to control. The consequences are more tangible than they usually are in more mundane settings — if Katsa loses control, she breaks someone’s jaw by accident — but the principle is the same. The teenage characters in this novel, like some we may know in life, grow into their graces. They realize that their monstrous individuality is not so monstrous after all.

Roiphe, K. (2008). Lady killer [Review of the book Graceling by K. Cashore]. The New York Times. Retrieved March 15, 2015 from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/09/books/review/Roiphe-t.html.


Library Uses: This could be a fun book to have as a yearly read along with a school district and town for teens. There could be monthly meeting where they discuss different chapters of the book and have meetings that discuss different fantasy tropes and readalikes. Once the read along has ended, there could be a cosplay party where they are invited to come dressed up as a character from the book. I know Dallas and other cities have yearly book reads and think that a fantasy or science fiction book would do well with one of those.