Graceling (Gracelng Realm #1) Ebook Review

4.25/5 Stars

Graceling
(Book #1 Graceling Realm)
By Kristan Cashore
October 1st, 2008, Harcourt
Genre: Fantasy

Synopsis:

The Graced are an abnormality in the population, for they possess skills beyond that of a normal human. Some are Graced with singing giving them the most beautiful voices in all the kingdom, others cooking, and some have non sensible abilities like being able to eat rocks without getting sick. All Graced children –except in Leinid -  must be turned over to the king and serve them for their purposes. They are easy enough to identify because each Graced person has eyes of two different colours.

Katsa is such a person, and niece to the King of Middlum. While most people want little to do with the Graced, people especially want nothing to do with her. Her Grace is killing, and she can fight 10 men with little effort on her part. Her Uncle is more than happy to take advantage of this Grace and sends her to do his dirty work. Breaking fingers of those who have offended, or cheated him in some way.

As times passes Katsa grows weary of her brutal role that is forced upon her by her uncle, and instead she forms a secret council to help people from the injustices of the kingdom. On a rescue mission to save an old man who had been imprisoned,  Katsa encounters a Graced a fighter, which instead of killing to protect her identity she spares.

A few days pass, and a Graced Leinid Prince shows up at her court. It is no coincidence that his Grace is fighting. She never expects to befriend Prince Po, nor to unravel the true nature of their Graces. She also could have never anticipated the terrible reason Po’s grandfather – the man she had rescued – was kidnapped.

What I thought:

This was a really interesting concept. I did have a hard time getting into it at first. I’m not entirely sure why, I think I may have had a hard time connecting to the characters, or it might have been because they had such odd names. The author did a good job laying out the land, since it was essentially North, South, East, West, Middle, Island, and the Sea. But this isn’t the kind of book I normally read. Once Poe was introduce I started to get more into it, but this wasn’t a quick read for me, it was steady. It takes me a while to get my foot in a completely new land scape like these books.

I did enjoy the book. My only complaint was that there several typos. Once I got over the strange names the characters started to grow on me, and Katsa had a lot of character development in her struggle of wanting to be more than just a savage killer.

If you are into fantasy alternate world, I would say this is a good book. But I have not read a lot in this genre. I found it entertaining enough to continue with a series.