Graceling by Kristin Cashore Book Review

Photo from Goodreads

Katsa can kill a man with her bare hands- she's a Graceling, meaning she's been "graced" with an extreme skill. You can tell someone's a Graceling by their eyes- two different colors. Although Katsa in the king's niece, she is forced under his thumb to be his thug because of her Grace. When she meets Prince Po-someone who almost matches her in terms of combat skills- she has no idea how her life is about to change.

When I first heard about this book, I was very skeptical mostly because I didn't trust the judgement of the people I had heard about it from. So I put off reading it for a long time because of my skepticism. I don't really regret that, but I do wish I had read it sooner because it was excellent.

There is never a dull moment in this book. There is always something happening, some sort of plot progression going on. The plot itself is excellent. You definitely can't tell from the very beginning what is going to happen, though what happens at the very beginning is very important.

I liked Katsa, but I didn't love her right off. I actually disliked how rude and cold she was. It was like she was just running around, screaming, "I CAN'T BE TAMED!" which is all right by me but it got annoying after awhile. I grew to care about her about halfway through, and now I'm disappointed that it doesn't look like she'll be in the next book. I also liked Po and all the other characters. I liked Katsa and Po together.

The world building in this book was excellent. I definitely got a feel for all the different kingdoms that we visit with Katsa. My favorite was Lienid. I'm intrigued by the next book because it takes place in a world outside the seven kingdoms.

I'm thinking I will read Fire soon, but I kinda want to just skip to Bitterblue because I don't think Katsa's in next book. But I don't want to skip around in the series so I'll end up reading Fire. 


Have you read Graceling? What did you think?