Hey guys!Today I've got my english assignment for you.
I had to do a book report for my class and I thought I'd just upload it here.
Not my usual review style but maybe(hopefully) you'll like it anyway.
So, here we go:
Graceling
"Graceling"
is Kristin Cashore's first novel and what a great debut it
is!
Published in October 2008 by Harcourt Brace & Co it was
praised for many things - perfectly pitched writing, a kick-ass
heroine, the unbelievable world Cashore built around the
protagonists.
And
-in my opinion- the latter is the most impressive one.
„Graceling“
tells the story of a girl living in a world -unknown to us- where
some people are born with an extreme skill called a Grace and these
people are feared and shut off from society.
The
main protagonist Katsa was eight years old when her Grace was
discovered when she killed her cousin in an act of selfdefence.
Since
then, her uncle and guardian King Randa has claimed her his Graceling
killer.
He trained her and used her as his weapon to punish people
and arouse fear. Though the idea of killing displeases Katsa she
thinks because of her Grace it is her duty.
Attempting to use her
skills for what is good, she formed a community called the
Council
whose members support the citizens and work against the
injustice that exisits all over seven kingdoms.
On one of those
missions -to rescue the kidnapped father of the king of Lienid- Katsa
encounters another Graceling in the courtyard and is surprised to
find him able to match her in a fight, but in the end she knocks him
unconcious and completes her mission.
The Lienid boy appears at
King Randa’s palace a few days later and introduces himself as
Prince Greening Grandemalion but tells her to call him Po named after
a tree in Lienid.
They contract a friendship which involves a lot
of hand-to-hand combat due to the fact that no other fighter is
worthy of their skills.
After a while Katsa takes Po to his
grandfather who is hidden in the palace. The prince decides to stay
in Randas territory a little while longer to monitor his grandfathers
healing and to research why anyone would kidnap the father of the
Lienid king.
In an argument with Po about him lying about his
true Grace, Katsa realises that she has full control over her actions
and that she doesn't have to be Randas Graceling killer.
Just
after she stood up to King Randa Po and Katsa leave his palace and
attempt to find out who kidnapped Po's grandfather.
On their
journey the two of them fall in love and the prince helps Katsa
realize that her true grace isn't killing, but survival.
Po and
Katsa begin to suspect that King Leck of Monsea, known for his
kindness to the weak and to animals, may be a fraud.They believe he
has a Grace that allows him to deceive people and control their
thoughts which makes him extremely dangerous.
As soon as they
arrive in Mosea they watch as Leck murders his wife and Po and Katsa
rake the whole forest for Bitterblue, Lecks daughter who is in great
danger because of her father.
Po later tries to assassinate Leck,
who is protected by only graced guards, but is chased off after he
kills one of the guards. Po is injured by a fall into an icy lake as
well as shot with an arrow, making him unable to ride a horse and
therefore unable to escape from Leck. After Po's urging, Katsa takes
the princess Bitterblue to Po's castle in Lienid leaving Po behind.
Leck
arrives at Po's castle before Katsa and Bitterblue, where he has
charmed the entire royal family of Lienid.
Although initially
confused, Katsa realizes that Leck is about to tell everyone about
Po's real Grace which is perception. She then pulls her dagger out of
it's hilt and throws it straight at King Leck who dies. That breaks
his spell and makes Bitterblue Queen of Monsea.
Katsa eventually
goes back for Po, and discovers that the fall has blinded him.
However, his Grace allows him to sense the world around him, letting
him see where his eyes cannot. The two return to Monsea for
Bitterblue's coronation.
“Graceling” is set in the seven
Kingdoms Wester, Nander, Middluns, Monsea, Lienid, Sunder and
Estill.
Where these kingdoms are meant to be or in which century
the story takes part is unknown to the reader.
This is why the
reader feels transfered into a completely different world which
leaves a lot of room for own ideas and perceptions.
A thing worth
mentioning is the map that is present in the book.
This map shows
the seven kingdoms and their surroundings so the reader can follow
Katsa,Po and Bitterblue on their journey.
The very same map will
be attached to the report further down.
The
main characters in the novel are Lady Katsa, Prince Po, Princess
Bitterblue and King Leck.
Katsa is an eighteen year old girl with
dark hair and a blue and a green eye.
Both her parents died when
she was young so her uncle King Randa became her guardian.
This is
why she was raised in his palace.
There she was trained so she
would be useful to the king and do the dirty work for him.
When
Katsa turned sixteen she founded the Council to use her Grace for
something good instead of punishing people for Randa.
During
“Graceling” Katsa -at last- finds the courage to stand up to the
king and leaves the court with Po to search for answers about the
kidnapping of Po's grandfather.
Katsa is a fiercely independent
woman who does not like being restrained. She will often seem stern
and very serious, not laughing much at all. Her grace makes other
people believe she is a born killer incapable of showing mercy. By
her own admission, her grace is hard to control due to her intense
emotions occasionally getting the better of her.
However,
she has a very kind heart, as shown by how she started the Council
just to help all the people of the seven kingdoms who have been
wronged by the seven kings. She helped Bitterblue learn to defend
herself and decided to help other girls across the country with
self-defense lessons.
Katsa seems to have a certain level of
dignity and respect for life, as she says that she tries to avoid
killing when she can. She was disgusted by her past actions to
others, occasionally refering to herself as a "murderous dog"
or "monster".
But once she stands up to Randa she
wonders if she really is a monster, now that she's not killing for
him anymore( “When a monster stopped behaving like a monster,
did it stop being a monster? Did it become something else?” )
She
has a good sense of leadership, which has allowed her to be regarded
as the leader of the Council. She seems to be fearless for the most
part and has no problem doing potentially dangerous missions as
making her way through Grella's pass to save the princess.
However,
while she can be seen as a very analytical and perceptive combatant,
she is oblivious to the emotions of others, including her own.
I
really enjoyed her character even though on a personal level, I still
disagree with some of Katsa's views.
Katsa namely thinks that
relationships and marriage would take her freedom and that once you
unite with someone, your partner controls you.
A pararaph which
expresses just this is the following one:
“If she took Po as
her husband, she would be making promises about a future she couldn't
yet see. For once she became his wife, she would be his forever. And,
no matter how much freedom Po gave her, she would always know that it
was a gift. Her freedom would be not be her own; it would be Po's to
give or to withhold. That he never would withhold it made no
difference. If it did not come from her, it was not really hers.”
Po,however
seems willing to spend the rest of his life with Katsa, whether she
will or will not marry him.
And it is more then obvious that the
two of them love eachother.
Po is described as a dark haired young
man of no more than nineteen or twenty with sundarkened skin and one
silver and one gold eye. Katsa often states that he is beautiful or
handsome. His ears are pierced, he wears a pair of gold hoop earrings
at all times and has ten rings on his fingers. His upper arms are
adorned with a pair of tattoos that he tells Katsa are meant to be
found attractive, and to be seen only by the woman he will marry.
He
is initially believed to be graced with hand fighting, but it is
revealed that his true Grace is perception. He is able to sense the
world around him and the thoughts of others, but only when they are
directed at him. These senses come to him automatically and he has no
control whatsoever with his ability. Po was forced to hide his
Grace's true nature at an early age by his mother for fear that
others would be tempted to use him for their own gain.
The prince
is generous and kind and isn't ambitious for power as some of his
brothers are.
He seems to care a lot about his family seen when he
travels through the kingdoms to find his grandfather.
Katsa teases
him about being conceited throughout the book (“He leaned into
the light, and brightness and shadows moved across his body. He was
beautiful. She admired him, and he flashed a grin at her. 'Almost as
beautiful as you are conceited', she thought at him, and he laughed
out loud.”).
He looses his eyesight at the end of book which
seems to have broken his spirits at first but with Katsa's help and
his Grace he get's used to being blind with time.
Bitterblue
is the 10 year old daughter of King Leck and Queen Ashen and
therefore the princess of Monsea.
She was able to break out of
Leck's spell because of the way he abused her and her mother and
because of that and because the King killed Ashen, Bitterblue wants
him to die.
At first she is shy and doesn't trust anybody but
after a while she takes to Po and Katsa and in the end the three of
them act like family around eachother.
Bitterblue claims the
throne of Monsea at the end of the novel and with the help of King
Ror of Lienid she unchains her people from Leck's magic.
She is
the main protagonist in the sequel, "Bitterblue".
King
Leck is the main antagonist in “Graceling”.
He is not the
legitimate heir of the throne, but because the former king became his
guardian and he and his wife didn't have children on their own, Leck
became king after he poisened and killed them.
Leck wears an
eyepatch so no one could see his different coloured eyes and identify
him as a Graceling.
He is cold and cruel, possibly even
sociopathic but this can't be confirmed.
No one outside his family
knew he was evil because Leck convinced everyone that he was a caring
and loving King.
At the end of the novel he is killed by Katsa who
throws a knife at him.
Kristin
Carshore's style of writing is a really pleasant one to read.
I
really love how it flows, how the sentences connect.
As well as
that she has some romantic, some funny and some serious paragraphs in
her book.
Unfortunatly the action was lacking a little.
The
only real fight scenes were the friendly ones between Katsa and Po
and even the death of King Leck at the end was everything but
nerve-racking.“She dropped the
child,snatched the dagger from her belt and threw. Not because she
remembered Leck must die. Not because she remembered the truth of
Po's Grace. But because she remembered that Po did have a secret
[...]
She must stop him; she must silence this man, before the
ruinous words were said.”
This quote
is not just to clarify my point of view but to show some used
rhetorical devices as well.
In this paragraph alone you can find a
couple of anaphoras, a parallelism and an antithesis.
Rhetorical
devices appear throughout the book but heap on important scenes and
paragraphs like the one just given.
All in all I believe that
“Graceling” is a read-in-one-go.
I really loved the world one
could imagine oneself into and it has likeable and well elobarated
characters.
If I had to list the books weaknesses I would probably
name the way women are depicted.
Either they are kick-ass,
fearless heroines or they are helpless, weak creatures who can't
think for themselfs.
And maybe this is something that Carshore
wanted to express in the book as well because there is a great deal
of feminism in it.
Another thing I would list are the sequels of
“Graceling”.
I would have loved to read more about Katsa, Po,
Ror and all the other charcters instead of the new characters that
the sequel “Fire” features.
But despite that I would recommend
the book to my friends due to the fact that it carries you off into a
completely different world full of Gracelings, love and adventure.
Love,
Heni
