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4.13 AVERAGE
4.13 AVERAGE
adventurous
challenging
dark
emotional
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Another amazing book in the Graceling Realm series. Really really liked Hava, and for once I didn’t mind a first person pov. I actually really related to a lot of what Hava was going through so it was perfect timing to read this. Would highly recommend this series.
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Had to give it 3 stars. I enjoyed it, but it feels like several hundred pages of set up for something else. Not enough meat to the stew, if that makes sense.
adventurous
emotional
hopeful
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
3.5 stars. I love this universe, but this one really dragged for me. I know Hava is a teen with some serious PTSD, but the teen angst got annoying at times. That being said, it has wonderful thought provoking lines about freedom for all relationships, environmental consequences, trauma effects, and the Government's responsibility towards weapon technology and its consequences on humanity.
medium-paced
adventurous
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Kristin Cashore’s Graceling Realm series focuses on the interplay between the personal and the political, with fantasy elements that emphasize the journey of the main character within each work. Ultimately, each novel is far more character-driven than plot-driven, and Seasparrow is no exception. The political setting often fades so far into the background, it disappears. Unlike previous entries in the series, Fire, Graceling and Bitterblue in particular, the central question of Hava, the main character, is not what her place in the political realm is, but rather, whether she wants a place in politics at all.
In the Graceling Realm series, characters can be born with fantastical powers, called graces, and our main character Hava struggles with her notable one: the ability to change others’ perception of her. She can quite simply make herself disappear by turning her body into, at various times, a coiled rope, a statue, and more. Born perhaps out of desperation - having to hide herself from birth through age eight from her nefarious father, King Leck - this grace gives her a tenuous relationship with perception, truth, knowledge, other people, and even herself. It also places her in the obvious role of spy within her sister’s, Queen Bitterblue’s, royal court. The drive of this novel is Hava’s considerable struggle with this role. Even as she struggles for her literal life after a shipwreck and dangerous trek, she clings to and runs from her royal role, this preoccupation occupying the majority of her internal narration.
Hava is a strong character and deeply sympathetic, which allows this novel to work. The setting and political plot are bare bones, left over from previous works within the series; the flesh and organs of the novel are Hava and her personal journey. And it was certainly Cashore’s intent: the narrative style of this work is much more conversational than any other book in the series, almost like a recorded recounting of the events. Hava’s deep curiosity, her hunger for connections to others, her desire to define the edges of herself, all endear her to the reader, and allow us to forgive her more irrational moments. Her frank, authoritative tone shapes the world around her and therefore us. Once she decides something is so, it becomes exactly that within the story. Like Hava, we become mutable, forever changing as the world around her shifts.
Much of the conflict stems from the various ways Hava defines herself. As someone whose appearance to others changes at her whim, she cannot define herself in typical ways. What is her body, her looks, to her when she controls how they appear at all times? Nothing. Instead, Hava at various points defines herself by her relationship to Bitterblue, by her actions, by her role within the court, and by her usefulness. But these definitions often do not align, and when she feels a role is slipping from her, she feels unmoored from reality. Her personal journey is figuring out how she wants to define herself, how she wants to exist. After all, if you can make yourself disappear from everyone’s perception, how do you know you are real at all?
Early on, Hava describes a moment as “sunk into herself,” and this one line defines the appeal of this book. Here we are, on a journey, sunk into Hava’s mind and figuring ourselves out.
This book... is not going to be for everyone. Or even, maybe, very many people.
But I never would have thought that a book like this, from the point of view of a character like this, could exist, and I am so deeply grateful it does. This book is so long because Hava takes a long time to process her feelings and emotions, and I absolutely, profoundly appreciate a character who sometimes (often) needs to lay down and stare at the sky to figure out why she keeps yelling at people she wants to be friends with.
There is very little of the fantastical to this novel, other than it is set in the fantasy world from the rest of the series, so there are fantasy elements to the characters. But they're really zoomed in on, as more like personality traits than magical powers, in a way I think is really interesting. This is a slow, loving exploration of Hava. Emphasis on SLOW. (With a backdrop of an arctic survival story that honestly was more terrifying to me than any horror I have read recently.) I think there's a lot of people who won't appreciate this. I wouldn't have thought that I would appreciate this. Maybe it was just altogether too easy to put myself into Hava's shoes. Or rather, Hava's brain.
"I want you to know why I'm angry... I want you to know why I'm mean. The anger inside me is too big. If I look at it too close, I feel too much grief to survive."
And, also, I love that there is someone who, despite all the negative elements of Hava's emotions, finds her interesting enough to be wholly entranced by her. But not only that--there are characters who are gentle with her. Who take the time to get to know her enough to try communicating with her in ways that she understands. Who forgive her for being mean. Who treat her like a person who is scared, and not like a person who is awful, or a person who needs to change everything about herself to have any friends. And that's nice.
P.S.Am I the only one reading Hava as autistic or
But I never would have thought that a book like this, from the point of view of a character like this, could exist, and I am so deeply grateful it does. This book is so long because Hava takes a long time to process her feelings and emotions, and I absolutely, profoundly appreciate a character who sometimes (often) needs to lay down and stare at the sky to figure out why she keeps yelling at people she wants to be friends with.
There is very little of the fantastical to this novel, other than it is set in the fantasy world from the rest of the series, so there are fantasy elements to the characters. But they're really zoomed in on, as more like personality traits than magical powers, in a way I think is really interesting. This is a slow, loving exploration of Hava. Emphasis on SLOW. (With a backdrop of an arctic survival story that honestly was more terrifying to me than any horror I have read recently.) I think there's a lot of people who won't appreciate this. I wouldn't have thought that I would appreciate this. Maybe it was just altogether too easy to put myself into Hava's shoes. Or rather, Hava's brain.
"I want you to know why I'm angry... I want you to know why I'm mean. The anger inside me is too big. If I look at it too close, I feel too much grief to survive."
And, also, I love that there is someone who, despite all the negative elements of Hava's emotions, finds her interesting enough to be wholly entranced by her. But not only that--there are characters who are gentle with her. Who take the time to get to know her enough to try communicating with her in ways that she understands. Who forgive her for being mean. Who treat her like a person who is scared, and not like a person who is awful, or a person who needs to change everything about herself to have any friends. And that's nice.
P.S.