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crufts's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
There's a lot to compliment about Graceling:
- The narrative hooked me from the start! I ended up reading the entire book in a matter of days. That's pretty rare for me!
- The fantasy setting is easy to absorb and understand; for example, the realm's kingdoms are mnemonically named (Wester = west, Nander = north, Estill = east, Sunder = south, Middluns = center, Monsea = mountains).
- Exciting, dynamic fight sequences, especially the unarmed combat passages.
- Interesting Good vs Good conflicts, where there's real tension because both sides have a point. e.g.
Po concealing the truth about his Grace. - Nice subversion of romance tropes when
Katsa's childhood friend Prince Raffin doesn't end up as Katsa's romantic interest. - The protagonist is exceptionally powerful, but so are the forces against her, so the stakes of the story felt balanced.
- The elements used in the later parts of the story are all foreshadowed and introduced near the beginning.
Graceling sticks to the fundamental writing principles that make a book fun to read. It's just a well-written story, plain and simple. I've docked half a star because the climactic showdown scene at the end could be improved by stretching it out longer, and there are one or two other issues, but this didn't detract much from my enjoyment overall.
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Sexual content
Minor: Incest and Child abuse
Stacks of violence, especially from our killing-Graced protagonist.There are a few fade-to-blacks between the romantic leads.
Some people suspect that a villain is abusing children.
nickthefailure's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
Minor: Sexual content
livia_nardi524's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.5
Moderate: Violence
Minor: Sexual content
booksthatburn's review against another edition
- 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
4.0
It's about loneliness, abuse, and healing, including abuse to children and animals, so please be aware that those are major themes in the book.
The world building is solid, with enough detail to make later revelations feel important. The explanations feel natural, occurring as something happens or Katsa thinks of some detail. This makes it feel like the world is slowly being revealed even though early on it's not new to the protagonist. I like Po, he had a difficult set of things to balance and overall I like how he is with Katsa. His situation towards the end skirts some potentially problematic ableist tropes but manages to not make it seem like his late-acquired disability is what gives him greater control of his powers. YMMV on whether this works, I think it does because of the precise order of events.
Overall I like this a lot and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series.
Graphic: Murder and Death
Moderate: Sexism, Misogyny, Kidnapping, Child abuse, Animal cruelty, Medical content, Blood, Vomit, Violence, Torture, Animal death, Death of parent, and Child death
Minor: Sexual content and Sexual assault
agoldendear's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
2.0
1. Characters: I can see why people would like Katsa, the main character. She's one of those strong, silent, fend-for-myself, socially-inept female leads who needs to learn to trust people. But I feel like I've definitely read more successful versions of this character trope recently. Probably the main thing that annoyed me about Katsa was how a good chunk of her development occurred, particularly in the first half of the book. It felt less like gradual development and more like Katsa coming across a mental dilemma, spending several pages consumed in thought about it, and then coming to a decision. One such issue was the love story, which
The other two characters who I would consider "main" are Po and Bitterblue. Po, the love interest, is probably my favorite character, mainly because I thought the secrets he carried and plot twists that revolved around him were the most interesting parts of the book. Aside from that, I honestly can't remember much about Po's personality except that he likes pretty things and being free, and that he's a generally nice person. So he didn't leave much of a lasting impact on me. Bitterblue, on the other hand, only shows up about two-thirds of the way through the book. I also couldn't tell you much about her personality, but I'm a little more forgiving of that because she has her own book to flesh her out. But that's why I find it so odd that two-thirds of the way through this book, she suddenly becomes such a huge part of this story after being hardly mentioned prior.
There was one aspect to the character development that I found pretty good--mainly how the book managed to make problems that couldn't simply be fixed by Graces. Throughout much of the book, the main characters, particularly Katsa, are pretty overpowered because of their magical Grace powers (I mean this in the physical/fighting sense--they do have some internal/mental issues to work out most of the time). That's why I really liked when things started getting down to the wire and Katsa couldn't just punch away all her problems (well, probably not "punch", but you get the gist of what I mean).
2. The Main Plot and Big Bad Guy: This is where my biggest issues with the book lie. I feel that even if you are someone who loved Po and Katsa, you may still be able to see that the plot was a bit lacking. For one thing, I really don't think that much interesting stuff happens in this book. There's a small amount of actual combat, and much of the dialogue is just people talking over meals. For me at least, this book had too much "telling" compared to "showing", and the stuff that was shown was often over way too quickly. Case in point: the big bad guy, who I will be putting into spoilers. Please be warned--it's quite spoilery.
3. Worldbuilding: Another thing that lacks in "showing" is the worldbuilding. I understand that some fantasies are looser with worldbuilding than others, but I guess I like them more fleshed out.
In general, I'm not a huge fan of Graces. It's a very loose sort of magic--having a Grace basically just makes you really good at a certain specific thing, and the extent of that "good-ness" varies from person to person. I do like that Graces have the potential to be misunderstood, even by the person with said Grace, but overall I tend to prefer magic systems with more rules to them. Nonetheless, I wish we saw more of the Graces in this book. Most of them that we see are really violent or powerful ones, although we are told that a lot of people get innocent ones, like swimming. Because of this, I hope there is a bigger variety of Graces that show up in the next books in the series.
The other thing that isn't very fleshed out is the world itself. I liked how it was easy to remember where each kingdom was due to their extremely unsubtle names (Nander, Sunder, Estill, Wester, Middluns), but I only got the sense that they were generic fantasy kingdoms. We did get some really interesting secondhand details about the structure of Monsea (mountain kingdom) and the culture of Lienid (island kingdom), but the main characters were present in each of these locations for such a short amount of time that we hardly got to actually "see" anything. Once again, I hope the world is expanded upon in future books.
TLDR: I wish this book's characters and world were more fleshed out and the story had better pacing. That's basically it.
Graphic: Violence and Torture
Moderate: Pedophilia, Animal death, and Death
Minor: Sexual content and Child death
Regarding disabilities:ken_mcmurdie's review
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Moderate: Sexual content and Violence
canascorner's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Graphic: Death, Gaslighting, Murder, and Violence
Moderate: Child abuse, Emotional abuse, Animal death, Child death, Sexual harassment, and Death of parent
Minor: Sexual content
amphitrite's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
Graphic: Violence
Moderate: Blood, Murder, Child abuse, and Emotional abuse
Minor: Animal death and Sexual content
victorianrogue's review
- 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
5.0
Moderate: Animal cruelty, Animal death, Blood, Death, Death of parent, Murder, Torture, Violence, and Sexual content
Minor: Child abuse and Child death
beebookcandle's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
Graphic: Animal cruelty
Moderate: Child abuse and Violence
Minor: Sexual content, Sexual assault, and Pedophilia
The “bad” character is 100% purely evil. So bad.