107. GRACELING

Kristin Cashore 2008

In this refreshing young adult fantasy set in the land of seven kingdoms, where people are born with exceptional abilities called Grace, marked by two different colored eyes, there lives Katsa, an orphan girl with the Grace of Killing. She lives with her uncle Randa, who uses her as a Savage killer against the enemies of his Kingdom Middluns. There also lives Prince Po from the Kingdom of Lienid, known to have a Grace for Fighting, and the only boy who matches Katsa's prowess in combat. They join forces to foil the evil ruler Leck in the Kingdom of Monsea. It was during this quest that Katsa and Po discovers each other's strengths, real Grace and deep love for each other. Although romance is a part of the plot, this one is boldly different and falls secondary to the effective portrayal of a young female blessed with startling beauty, infinite strength, a good heart and an independent streak and survival instinct uniquely her own .

'In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind. One that had so far proven correct, as Oll's maps tended to do.' (opening lines)

'They would assume she was a boy, because in her plain trousers and hood she looked like one, and because when people were attacked it never occurred to anyone that it might have been a girl.'(6)

"I've heard you have one eye green as the Middluns grasses, and the other eye blue as the sky.'(21)

'His eyes. Katsa had never seen such eyes. One was silver, and the other gold. They glowed in his sun-darkened face, uneven, and strange. She was surprised that they hadn't shone in the darkness of their first meeting. They didn't seem human. She couldn't stop looking at them.'(56)

'Dear Helda. She saw what Katsa was and what she did, and Helda didn't deny that Katsa was that person. But she couldn't fathom a lady who didn't want to be beautiful, who didn't want a legion of admirers. And so she believed Katsa was both people, though Katsa couldn't imagine how she reconciled them in her mind.'(64)

'To Randa she was a savage dog he'd broken and trained. He set her on his enemies and allowed her out of her cage to be groomed and kept pretty, to sit among his friends and make them nervous.'(72)

'She was tired of fighting nine or ten men at once, fully armored men, none of them able to touch her, and she always tempering her blows. It would be thrill, a pure thrill to fight again. To fight him regularly, a dream.'(93)

'Katsa picked up her knife and fork, cut into her mutton, and thought about that. She knew her nature. She would recognize it if she came face-to-face with it. It would be a blue-eyed, green-eyed monster, wolflike and snarling. A vicious beast that struck out at friends in uncontrollable anger, a killer that offered itself as the vessel of the king's fury.'(137)

"I can't know your feelings," he said, "if you don't know them yourself."(162)

'Tears came to her eyes. Mercy was more frightening than murder, because it was harder, and Randa didn't deserve it. And even though she wanted what the voice wanted, she didn't think she had the courage for it.

Po thinks you have the courage, the voice said fiercely. Pretend that you believe he's right. Believe him, for just a moment.'(170)

"... how will I protect myself from him?"

He considered her seriously. "Well. And that's easy." he said. "my Grace will protect me from him. And I'll protect you. You'll be safe with me, Katsa."(222)

'She wasn't angry that there was a person who could provide her with help and protection. That would be arrogance, and she saw that arrogance was foolishness; she should strive for humility-- and there was another way he'd helped her. He'd gotten her thinking about humility. But it wasn't that. It was that she hadn't asked for a person whom she trusted, whom she would do so much for, whom she would give herself over to. She hadn't asked for a person whose absence, if she woke in the middle of the night, would distress her-- not because of protection he would then fail to give, but simply because she wished his company. She hadn't asked for a person whose company she wished.'(227)

'Could she be his lover and still belong to herself?'(234)

'The physical needs that limited other people did not limit her. The things from which other people suffered did not touch her. She knew instinctively how to live and thrive in the wilderness.'(252)

'The very fact of his unhappiness made him unhappy.

"I've no right to feel sorry for myself," he said to her one day, when they'd gone out into a quiet snowfall to fetch water. "I see everything. I see things I shouldn't see. I'm wallowing in self-pity, when I've lost nothing."(450)

"How exactly, when I'm aware of everything above, below, before, behind, and beyond me, am I supposed to keep my mind on the ground beneath my feet?"(453)

a Graphia edition

471 pages

Book owned