Graceling

Moving through a list of recommended young adult fantasy novels, first up was ‘Graceling’ by Kristen Cashore. I thoroughly enjoyed the book last night as it followed the adventure of a young girl named Katsa, who has the ability to survive pretty much any situation. She has an extreme natural skill in every form of combat that borderlines on god-like, among many other talents, and her utter physical superiority through the book was a little refreshing in the same way that the ‘Lioness Quartet’ was refreshing. Female characters quite simply do not have this type of role often enough in novels, and I love it.

I liked the simplicity of the book, but simultaneously found it a bit lacking. The seven kingdoms that make up the fictional world are rather generic, description of both characters and landscapes a little too vague to paint vivid pictures in the reader’s mind, and the story a little too linear. There were few branches in the story structure, with Katsa never relinquishing her role as ‘protagonist’ save once, for five minutes (and that ended badly for everyone involved). Political intrigue is nice, but in this case it was just too simplistic, and I craved a deeper experience through most of the second half of the novel.

That said, it’s a Character-based ‘young adult’ book- and though in principle I tend to say that my preference in fantasy tends more toward the Character aspect of the MICE Quotient, in practice I’ve found myself more immersed in Milieu-focused novels (Lord of the Rings is a milieu story, if you’re interested). ‘Graceling’ is character-focused, about 1-1-4-2 (Milieu, Idea, Character, Event), while the one I’m writing is probably more like 4-1-2-1 in favour of depth-in-descriptions for the world as a whole.

It was definitely a good book though, and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys character-focused fantasy quite readily.

[PERMALINK] - @2 years ago
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#literature #Graceling #Kristen Cashore #M.I.C.E. Quotient