Gravemaidens

Imagine you live from hand to mouth because your father wasn't able to save the ruler's son after a terrible fall. That failure resulted in your family, already in pain and disarray because your mother died giving birth, being stripped of rank, home and wealth, not to mention your younger brother being taken to the palace as a servant. Your dad, perhaps the most skilled healer in the city, now drowns his sorrow in a tavern every day while you try to hold things together by following in his footsteps as a healer, mostly for the poor living outside the city. With the death of the Lugal (the city's ruler) eminent, three maidens are to be chosen to accompany him to the netherworld where they will supposedly live a life of eternal ease and show more luxury. This is what healer in training Kammani faces, but things get worse very quickly. Her younger sister is chosen as one of the 'gravemaidens' and she knows the whole thing is a sham. Her sister, Nanaea, will die and soon, unless Kammani can do the impossible. That, for her means convincing the palace that her disgraced father can save the Lugal. However, once her plan is set in motion, things not only get much more complicated, she starts to realize that there are sinister forces at work and figuring out who to trust is very difficult.
This is a dandy first book with plenty of twists and hooks to grab teen fantasy lovers. I'm very curious as to how the author will wrap everything up in the sequel show less

In the walled city-state of Alu, Kammani wants nothing more than to become the accomplished healer her father used to be before her family was cast out of their privileged life in shame.

When Alu's ruler falls deathly ill, Kammani’s beautiful little sister, Nanaea, is chosen as one of three sacred maidens to join him in the afterlife. It’s an honor. A tradition. And Nanaea believes it is her chance to live an even grander life than the one that was stolen from her.

But Kammani sees the selection for what it really is—a death sentence.

Desperate to save her sister, Kammani schemes her way into the palace to heal the ruler. There she discovers more danger lurking in the sand-stone corridors than she could have ever imagined and that show more her own life—and heart—are at stake. But Kammani will stop at nothing to dig up the palace’s buried secrets even if it means sacrificing everything…including herself. show less

I actually quite enjoyed this novel. Author Kelly Coon draws on real life records of human sacrifice in ancient cultures as an inspiration for her fictional village of Alu. A small place deeply steeped in its traditions. One of the oldest traditions being the use of favored maidens given in sacrifice who are poisoned or otherwise killed so that they may join a departed ruler into the Netherworld. Young Kammani, a healer in training, knows all too well there is no great honor in being sacrificed to accompany the recently departed into the afterlife. So when her 15 year old sister is chosen as a sacred maiden, she vows to do all she can to save the life of the ruler who has fallen so grievously ill. We are given a rich and detailed show more history of Kimmani’s life, and I was riveted by her treacherous journey into the high life of palace society. As an outsider whose family was disgraced, Kimmani risks everything to save the life of the man who threw their family out into the hovels and took her young brother as a palace servant in exchange for the life of the son her father could not save. While they live very different lifestyles from our own, we can all relate to wanting to save our own loved ones from suffering. There is also plenty of high drama and treachery to go around, looks like this is book one in a series, and I look forward to hearing more from the young, fearless Kammani. Thank you to Netgalley for the early copy. show less

I did like this book. The world that author, Kelly Coon created for this story is great. I instantly got a vivid picture of the world and the people. There are a handful of key characters. Although, I found the only one that really interesting was Kammani.

The three maidens including Kammani's sister were "sheep". They did not really think for themselves or were that interesting. The other characters were fine but had trouble in the beginning trying to keep them straight. They seemed similar.

Despite the fact that most of the characters were not that interesting, it was the pure factor of Kammani being on her "A" game and the magical world that this book took place in that had me keep reading. I do want to read the sequel.

This review was guest posted on Ity Reads Books: Gravemaidens

Cast out of nobility for failing to save the ruler’s dying son, Kammani’s father spends his nights befuddled by alcohol. Having trained under her father, Kammani continues to heal when her father cannot. As the ruler of Alu falls ill, sacred maidens are called to accompany him into death. When Kammani’s sister is selected as a maiden, Kammani will do everything in her power to heal the dying ruler. But Kammani’s sister, Nanaea wants nothing more than to repair her family’s honor by being a maiden. An unknown illness plagues the ruler and Kammani must battle both the unknown and the spite from her sister. But as she begins to unearth hidden truths within the palace, show more she will realize there is much more at stake.

Gravemaidens read at an even pace, not holding too many twists or turns. I guessed a few of the plot reveals before they occurred, but it was still an entertaining read. Kammani’s character kept me reading. She was dedicated to the healing arts and was extremely different from the usual YA protagonist who chases after love. While Kammani acknowledged that she did feel attracted to Dagan, she was responsible enough to know that she had an important job to do.

This book does touch on cruelty towards women, as the world of Alu contains men who see women as beneath them. There are moments of abuse, but once the structure is established it dances on the edge of this theme. Men leer at the woman and make lewd suggestions throughout the novel to remind the reader of the dangers Kammani could be in if caught alone.

But despite everything she has to face, Kammani is determined to save her sister. Even if Nanaea fights against it every step of the way. The age difference between the two was so clear when Nanaea bickered with Kammani over being a maiden. And yet through it all, Kammani’s love for her sister was so clear to the reader.

I’m intrigued to see where the next book leads. Given where the characters end up, I am puzzled as to how the series can continue. But Kelly Coon must have something planned, and I can’t wait to see what it is! show less

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from NetGalley and Delacorte Press in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

While I appreciate a few of the unique and creative ideas in Gravemaidens, there are a few things that made me pause. At its bare bones, this is an interesting book with characters that could be loved. But it doesn’t quite get to that raving fan point. Gravemaidens is a forgettable book, and honestly? I’m disappointed.

In a rare event for me, I let myself wait a day to write this review. Usually, I’m scheduling these reviews within hours of finishing. Gravemaidens required some additional thought, because I needed to find the right words to express the show more weird feeling I had about it. What I’ve come up with is this: I don’t think Kelly Coon was the right person to write this book. Perhaps it’s just because this is her debut, but as a fantasy and the first book in a series? It left me wanting. Her world building in particular lay flat. There were a few sideways mentions of cultural things and the legend of the Boatman and the Sacred Maidens… which in itself, honestly, was not that well described. She left a little too much to the reader’s inference, and as such, failed to enchant.

There was too much emphasis on dialogue and too little on scene building. This style works better in contemporary – where the reader doesn’t need an introduction to the culture so much as a taste of it. In fantasy or historical fiction (where, like Sky in the Deep, this sits) it means the reader is forced to accept a lot of things, and it’s extraordinarily difficult to relate to the characters. Gravemaidens is set in (or at least inspired by) ancient Sumer. While I don’t know very much about this particular period in history, I do know that there was more that could have been done to bring it to life, even if it required a bit more creative license on the part of the author. This is such a cool era to be working in, because I honestly don’t think I’ve even heard of another book set in this period. I wanted more immersion, and definitely didn’t get it.

And then there’s Kammani. While I appreciate the dissenter perspective, when it comes to the tale of the Sacred Maidens, it was basically Kammani vs. the world and she was the only one who seemed to believe that the rites of passage meant dying. This bothered me a lot – not because she was the only dissenter – but because of the way she harped on it, told everyone, and everyone shrugged her off like a child. The fact that everyone seemed to be so okay with her spouting what was a cross between conspiracy theory and blasphemy to these people seemed a bit off for me. Kammani tends to obsess over ideas, repeating herself to no avail until magically everyone is on her side. This made the plot progression feel really jumpy as well. I sort of felt like nothing Kammani did in this book actually mattered. Even though she ran into pitfalls, they all seemed to happen just because she existed, not as a direct consequence to her actions.

There were a few things I liked. As I said, drawing inspiration from ancient Sumer was a magnificent idea, and I really would have liked to see more of that. The whole idea of the Sacred Maidens, as well, was really interesting. There are a lot of historical cultures who sacrificed family, servants, and animals to join a prominent member of society on (usually) his journey through the Underworld, and it’s something I had never seen explored in YA. There was also a perfectly chilling moment in the climax scene that let the book slip from historical fiction to fantasy for a moment, and I thought it was really spooky and we’ll-done and if only the whole book could have been like that!

There’s a twist in the middle of the book, and I saw it coming from the first time the character was mentioned. It may just be because I read a lot, but I’ve come to expect that there are more layers to characters, so that the real Grumpy Person is not really the villain, but a distraction. And that nothing is as it appears to be. So it’s gotten to be a bit disappointing when, nope, everything is exactly how I expected it would be and there were no surprises. The whole plot seemed to shift about halfway through from healing the lugal to figuring out who was plotting. Again, it was like Kammani wanted to talk about it rather than act. She was incredibly biased with no actual reason to be so. And the switch in plot was so clunky, coming out in conversation that was supposed to be a big reveal but was, again, more of a “well yes of course that’s what’s going on” moment. And what baffled me the most was that all the characters blindly believed her. And that all of her plans went awry, but fortunately, there was always another character with a different, barely explained plan, that worked!

So frustrating.

Anyways, these are just my opinions. I found it a generally weak example of writing and world building within the genre. I usually try to be a bit nicer with debuts, so I fully acknowledge that HEY! This is a debut, it’s going to be a little rough. I don’t think I’m going to be picking up the rest of the series because it’s not that it’s a poorly-written book… I just feel so much like it’s a mismatch. I know it’s unkind to box people in, but with the writing style we see in Gravemaidens, I just feel like Kelly Coon would be better suited to contemporary where the world building and character creation is a bit less atmospheric (not dissing contemporary, which I’ve grown to like).

Please, also know that a couple authors I really like have already given this five stars and Goodreads and Gravemaidens is being generally really well received. I’m the odd person out on my opinions about this book, so if it’s something you’re interested in, you should still give it a try. Chances are you will vehemently disagree and love it! show less

I got a copy of this book to review through NetGalley. Thanks to NetGalley and Delcorte Press for providing a copy to review. This is the first novel in the Gravemaidens duology. This was a well done YA fantasy novel. It was a bit slow but was well written.

This story is about a young woman, Kammani, who is training to be a healer. Kammani’s sister is chosen to be sacrificed with the king when he dies. As a result Kammani makes it her priority to try and heal the king in order to prevent her sister’s death.

This novel moved a bit slow, but had excellent world-building and engaging characters. I liked that the main heroine really valued herself as a healer and made sure that others saw her value as well. The setting is Middle Eastern show more and was intriguing.

The book ends up being more about intrigue and deceit and didn't have much action. It's promoted as being really dark and edgy...and it really isn't. All in all this is a well done, but fairly typical, YA fantasy book.

The story ties up nicely (although this is supposed to be a duology). I am unsure right now if I will continue this series or not; I liked it but I didn't love it.

Overall this is a solid fantasy story about political intrigue in a Middle Eastern setting. The pacing was a bit slow for me but the world-building was well done and the characters were engaging. I would recommend to those who enjoy YA fantasy in a middle eastern setting and like a lot of intrigue in their story. show less