Kristin Cashore: Graceling

In the first in the series, Kristin Cashore takes readers on a journey to save not only a child but a Kingdom:

Katsa has been able to kill a man with just her hand since she was a child. She is a Graceling, blessed with a a special ability, an extreme skill that cannot be matched. Once her Graceling status was known she was given to the King to be his personal hit squad. Katsa accepted her life a long time ago, but then another Graceling who challenges everything she knows and is good at, Po. Katsa begins to question things as Po makes her think more about her Graceling ability and When someone in Po's family needs help, she will do anything to actually do something good with her abilities. But the road ahead is a dangerous one, enemies are made and not all will be the same when this is done.

I have heard nothing about good things about this series and about Katsa as a character. I really enjoyed this story and I was able to read it almost in one sitting. Cashore was able to draw me into the story right away with the idea of Gracelings and Katsa as a character. 

I loved Katsa as a character she knows who she is and what she wants and what she wants to do with her Graceling powers, but that was not how she started in the world. When she first discovers that she has the ability to beat anyone in a fight at eight, there are those that take advantage of her ability for murder and torture. It is as Katsa grows up she become more and more uncomfortable doing what she is told and the acts she is being told to do. She finds her inner strength and a new purpose in life. 

I think one of my favourite things in the book was the relationship between her and Po, it is so sweet and honest and full of emotions especially the farther you read into the story. Po is also a Graceling, so he understands some of things that Katsa has gone through but he had a very different upbringing that her. 

My main critique about the book I wasn't a fan of how the book was written, very paragraph heavy to the point that it felt clunky in the executions. Each new paragraph was almost always a new point in time, a new scene. This also meant that the book had longer chapters due to this fact. I wish that she broke it up a bit more in terms of chapters instead of paragraphs.

Although I enjoyed this book in the sense of Characters and Story how it was written really made it hard to read at times, that I don't think I will continue on in the series, especially as Katsa's story is wrapped up in this book. But i did enjoy this book overall.

Enjoy!!!!

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