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A review by joanna1905
Graceling by Kristin Cashore
3.0
This was a slog and I have no idea why. This book has everything I’d usually love but for some reason I just didn’t connect with it.
There’s honestly nothing I can point to as a reason for this so I think it’s more of a me issue - I think perhaps it took me too long to get into which caused me to be less motivated to read it, so it took me far longer to read than a book this length usually would. Reading it so slowly just made the story feel even slower.
The only thing I can point to plot wise was the relationship with Kasta and Po which happened wayyyyyy earlier than I was expecting. Now don’t get me wrong it was glaringly obvious that their relationship was going to end up being romantic however they had been so slow to get along as friends that I was expecting it to culminate near the ending and not so early on. This made it feel a little rushed to me, perhaps not from Po’s pov because his grace meant he could glean so much about Kasta but it seemed uncharacteristic that Kasta would flip that quickly.
I loved the journey though the mountains, that was super cool and badass af.
The end was fairly predictable however the knife to the throat of old mate did surprise me, I definitely thought he was going to be a more prolonged villain.
All in all this is a well written book with a solid plot, perhaps a tad slow but that’s hardly the worst a fantasy could be accused of.
I don’t think it helped that I went into it thinking it was an adult fantasy not a young adult one which meant I went into it with slightly different expectations. Knowing it’s ya makes does help contextualise it a little - because as much as I adore ya I don’t think there’s a fantasy ya alive that could come close to touching some of the great adult works (I’m looking at you Kingkiller Chronicles).
But comparison is the thief of joy so let’s stop with that - this is definitely one I’d be interested in continuing but I have a lot more books that are higher priority at the moment - but certainly one day.
There’s honestly nothing I can point to as a reason for this so I think it’s more of a me issue - I think perhaps it took me too long to get into which caused me to be less motivated to read it, so it took me far longer to read than a book this length usually would. Reading it so slowly just made the story feel even slower.
The only thing I can point to plot wise was the relationship with Kasta and Po which happened wayyyyyy earlier than I was expecting. Now don’t get me wrong it was glaringly obvious that their relationship was going to end up being romantic however they had been so slow to get along as friends that I was expecting it to culminate near the ending and not so early on. This made it feel a little rushed to me, perhaps not from Po’s pov because his grace meant he could glean so much about Kasta but it seemed uncharacteristic that Kasta would flip that quickly.
I loved the journey though the mountains, that was super cool and badass af.
The end was fairly predictable however the knife to the throat of old mate did surprise me, I definitely thought he was going to be a more prolonged villain.
All in all this is a well written book with a solid plot, perhaps a tad slow but that’s hardly the worst a fantasy could be accused of.
I don’t think it helped that I went into it thinking it was an adult fantasy not a young adult one which meant I went into it with slightly different expectations. Knowing it’s ya makes does help contextualise it a little - because as much as I adore ya I don’t think there’s a fantasy ya alive that could come close to touching some of the great adult works (I’m looking at you Kingkiller Chronicles).
But comparison is the thief of joy so let’s stop with that - this is definitely one I’d be interested in continuing but I have a lot more books that are higher priority at the moment - but certainly one day.