Graceling

By Kristin Cashore

Genre : fantasy, romance

First I should warn you. My tenses are so bad. I only use Microsoft Word 2007 to check them. Please bear with me though.

I take this book about 6 months ago. That time I don’t have a book left to read. I am so desperate when I decide to buy this one. But my choice turns out well. It’s one of my favorite books so far. It’s start with introduction to our heroine name Katsa. She’s a Graceling. A graceling is someone who has special abilities, like can swimming like a fish, or something more useful like mind-reading. There are so many abilities. But you can tell if someone are graceling or not by looking at their eyes. If their eyes have different color, then he or she is a graceling.

Our heroine’s ability is to kill. She can kill using any part of her body. Therefore she have been used by her uncle, the king, to suppress any inconvenience by have Katsa scare them. Time passes by, and our heroine didn’t felt content with her job. She decides to challenge her uncle by doing good things behind his back. This make her met our hero. He is a graceling too. And I guess you can find out the story after this fateful encounter. Their love is bloomed, etc.

What have I learn after reading this?

-          You never too old to changed the way you life

-          Not everything is as it’s seem

It’s worth your time. You could consider reading it. Happy holiday!

 

Please don’t read bellow this if you want to embrace the story yourself.

 

Spoiler

Katsa decide to save a Lienid’s king uncle from a dungeon where he’s held. There she met with another graceling who’s actually the prisoner’s grandson. His name is Prince Po. He is the youngest child on Lienid king’s son. He has ability for fighting.

Second encounter is when Katsa back after doing mission for Randa, Katsa’s uncle and King of Middluns. They grow fond with each other while searching for clue, why is Po’s grandfather is kidnapped. Katsa struggle in her heart became stronger, whether she should continue her job for Randa or not. In the last mission, where she decides not to agree to Randa’s order, she discovered about Po’s real ability.

Po’s real ability allow him to sense others feeling toward him, that makes his ability to fight stronger. At first Katsa felt betrayed and ashamed of what she’s been thought about Po. But they reconcile after a while. They decide to search the reason of kidnapping in the entire kingdom.

Then they stumble upon weirdness in the Monsea kingdom. Monsea is a kingdom that hard to reach because their surrounding is mountain. The king’s name is Leck. Leck’s wife is Po’s aunt. Po’s aunt behaves weirdly after hearing that kidnapping news. They decide to come to Monsea, searching on more clues. At the woods, they found out a woman is killed by her husband. And she is Po’s aunt. Before died, she asked Po to find her daughter, Po’s niece, and save her from her husband. Po found out that Leck is a graceling, and his ability is to control the mind of others. Usually when a graceling born, he or she will be given to their king. And if their ability turns out to be useless, they will be sent back to their parents. A graceling never considered a human, they are property, or if worse not worth being as human. Leck can be a king because his predecessor didn’t have any child, and when Leck come with his ability fully developed and only one eye, he became their child and succeed the throne, no body felt something wrong about it.

With Po’s ability, he didn’t affected by Leck’s mind control. And they flee from Leck’s pursuit and found Po’s niece, Bitterblue, hiding in the tree. They make a plan to kill Leck, actually the plan only including Po, because Katsa is affected by Leck’s mind control. Katsa will wait at the cave with Bitterblue. When Po come back, injured, and failed to execute Leck, they flee. Po’s insist that he only slower their journey. Po gives Katsa his ring, so she can take refuge in his home at Linead, Po’s hometown, while Po is left behind, try to recover from his wounds.

Katsa take Bitterblue through a mountain route to reach the port. The route is known because it’s hard to travel through. Katsa know that another route will be block by Leck soldier. She decides to take the gamble and choose that route. Katsa found out that her real ability is surviving.  And while she and Bitterblue successfully come to the port and travel to Po’s home, they find out that Leck’s and Po’s family is waiting for them.

While she is overwhelm by Leck suggestion, she successfully broke after for couple second, enough to let her kill Leck. Po’s family deluded and finnaly can be calmed down. Bitterblue as the new Monsea’s Queen is escorted back by her uncle, the Lienid’s king, and the king also helped Bitterblue to conditioned her new role. Katsa and Po’s brother came back to the woods where Po is left behind. Katsa found out that Po has lost his sight, but his ability is sharper, he can sense the elements by his surroundings. This book end with Katsa decide to teach female in all kingdom about self defense, because she found out many woman abused, while they can’t defend themselves.

I hope I have been squeezing enough detail. See you in the next post. J