Katsa has known about her Grace since she was ten-years-old when she killed a man for touching her. Ever since then, people have avoided looking her in the eye or being close to her in any way. Her uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, is the only one who sees the potential of her Grace and has her sent to his Captain, Oll, to have her trained in the art of combat. Soon she is sent to do the King’s dirty work around the Middluns and beyond.It is on her latest mission, when she comes into contact with another Graced fighter, that her life changes. She is thrust into a mystery that involves the skilled fighter, her own Grace, and a terrible secret that lies in a land far away. Katsa travels further from home than ever before and learns to put her trust in someone other than herself.GRACELING is a thrilling story of survival. Kristin Cashore’s ability to create the “magical” world of the seven kingdoms is impressive. While maintaining the excitement, the author also weaves together a tender love story. If you enjoy GRACELING, you’ll definitely be happy to hear about the companion book, FIRE, that is due to be released October 5, 2009. ( )

The book started a little slowly, but quickly picked up--by a quarter through, I couldn't put it down and read most of it in a day.

Katsa is a great character, and I hope to see more like her in your adult novels. She's strong, intelligent, headstrong, and learns to own her power and use it well. Po, with whom she develops a quick friendship, is similarly colorful, and the dialog between them had me laughing aloud at times.

When Katsa and Po realize they've fallen in love, and Katsa isn't willing to marry anyone and give up belonging to herself, she takes seriously the idea of becoming Po's lover, and thinks about it for many days. I really liked the way she consciously entered into sexual exploration with someone she loved--it was explored nicely here, in a non-graphic way.

I found myself thinking many times how much I wish girls would read Graceling instead of (or at least in addition to) Twilight. Katsa is a great, strong role model with a great deal of depth, and we really see her come into her own over the course of the book. This is an excellend young adult novel, and I look forward to reading more from Kristin Cashore. ( )

It took me almost no time at all to fall in love with Kristin Cashore’s main character, Katsa, in Graceling. In this book for young adult readers, Katsa is a strong – both literally and figuratively – sharp-minded young woman who practices a well-developed sense of ethics, knows herself, and knows what she wants (and more importantly, what she doesn’t want). What a wonderful role model she is for the female teenagers who are Cashore’s target audience! How much better it would be for a 13-year-old to read about this type of young woman than about some swoony female who falls for a vampire because he glimmers in the dark!

Katsa has a “Grace” – a special innate ability, as is evidenced by her eyes, one green, one blue. Her Grace reveals itself when she is 10 years old and a cousin makes sexual advances on her: she kills him. Swiftly, efficiently, and without thought, she smashes him in the face, pushing the bones of his nose into his brain. Everyone concludes that she is Graced with an ability to kill, though it also evidences itself with an uncanny ability to fight, to anticipate the movements of her enemies, and to avoid sickness. Still, others born with different-colored eyes are graced with such things as an uncanny ability to dance, or to swim like a fish; a Grace for killing is frightening to most, and her Grace therefore tends to isolate Katsa.

The logical thing for Katsa’s king to do in response to a child Graced with killing is to banish or kill her, even if she is his niece. But King Randa of the Middluns thinks instead of the use to which he can put her as an assassin or at least an enforcer, and keeps her close. He is not an evil man, but he is certainly greedy, and Katsa learns to hate the use to which he puts her. When he sends her to hurt one of his lords who has refused to offer up a daughter to an unsuitable marriage for which King Randa would receive the dowry, she must make a decision about whether she intends to live the rest of her life as a king’s instrument of power.

But that is only the beginning of her story. Katsa soon finds herself traveling with Po, a young prince from another country, to find out the story behind his grandfather’s kidnapping. Katsa tries her best not to fall in love with Po, because she has sworn never to marry or bear children. She falls nonetheless, but still manages to remain true to her decisions about how to lead her life, and how to make her life one with room for fully realized love.

This is what most impressed me about Katsa. Imagine: a woman who wants to remain wholly herself, for herself! Have you ever read about such a character in young adult fiction before? Heck, how often have you read about a female like this, of any age, in any fiction? I was even more amazed when Katsa was thrown into contact with a young child, a girl of 10 who needs her protection, and still doesn’t change her mind about bearing children of her own. Even today, one is considered unnatural for making such a choice. Cashore’s decision to write of such a woman in a medieval setting it strikingly imaginative.

Katsa’s quest becomes, as so many quests do, a voyage of self-discovery, though not in the traditional sense (that is, she does not change her mind about who she is, but instead discovers more about what she is able to do). In this story, she is the hero rather than the rescued. She does the rescuing. It does not make her male counterparts any weaker, but only makes her stronger.

I fear I am making this book sound like a feminist polemic. It is not. It is an exciting and well-told tale about a pair of fascinating characters, Katsa and Po, and the challenges they face. The supporting characters are equally well-drawn; Randa’s son Raffin, for instance, is essentially a scientist who seems to have missed inheriting his father’s greed and cruelty. Still, I find this book remarkable mostly because Katsa is such a strong character.

I wish I’d had this sort of role model to read about when I was a young teenager. For me, Little Jo from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women was about the only example I ever read of a girl who wanted to do something with her life besides get married and have babies – and even she wanted to write in addition to getting married and having babies. The idea that a woman could eschew the role of wife and mother was never presented to me. Thank goodness girls today know that that’s a choice, and that women like Kristin Cashore are writing characters who aren’t afraid to make that choice. ( )

Katsa lives in Middluns, the central kingdom of seven, where normal people are a little afraid of the Graced. And Gracelings like her...well, her Grace is a little scarier than most. She fights and kills easily, and she's feared for the acts her uncle, King Randa, has had her perform for him. Along with the Council, however, she's been working on her own -- and when she rescues a kidnapped Lienid, she comes across another who can fight her better than anyone else because of his Grace. Who is this mysterious Lienid who can give her more trouble in to hand-to-hand combat than anyone? What is his Grace? Why was his grandfather kidnapped, and by whom?

This read falls squarely in "my" genre of middle and high school fantasy. The fantasy elements were mostly not cliched, and the writing was fairly fluid though there were some awkward sentences here and there. It took me awhile to decide I liked the characters, particularly Katsa as I didn't really understand some of her choices and point of view. ( )

The Little Bookworm

Born into a world where some people are born with special "Graces," Katsa discovers at an early age that she has a Killing Grace. Made into her uncle the King's special enforcer, she decides to do some secret good to counteract the orders she carries out for the king. In the midst of rescuing a noble, she encounters Po, a prince for another kingdom and also Graced although harboring a secret. This sets off a chain of events that lead to an epic adventure and to Katsa discovering the truth of her own Grace.

I'd seen Graceling reviewed in a couple of different places and I knew I had to read it. This book certainly did not disappoint. I love when the female character is the strongest and can kick some serious butt. Katsa, despite doing some questionable things, is a sympathetic character and I enjoyed her. She is strong and willful, but doesn't recognize her true power in the beginning since she has been treated as an attack dog by her uncle and the people around her fear her. Po brings out the best in her and the way he treats her like a person makes her understand that she is more than how she was raised. Po was also an awesome character. He is strong and determined and tries to do right by Katsa. I loved him. I loved them both.
Now I can't wait for Fire, the companion novel. ( )