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Oct. 16th, 2012 05:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsSo three years after everybody else in the world read Graceling, I too have at last read Graceling!
I think part of the reason I put it off for so long is because I remember it being HUGE at about the same time that The Hunger Games was huge. Also, they both have stoic lady protagonists with names beginning with Kat, which meant I could not tell them apart. So I read The Hunger Games after months and months of hype, and was entertained enough but somewhat underwhelmed after months and months of hype, and sort of went "well, that's my stoic-lady-protagonist-called-Kat taken care of!" and forgot about both of them for a while.
It turns out I probably should have done it the other way around, because I actually liked Graceling way better than The Hunger Games!*
Part of this is that Katsa has SO MUCH agency. For those of you who have not actually read Graceling: Katsa is a magically skilled killer who reluctantly intimidates and murders people for her uncle, a semi-evil king. I knew this going in.
I did not expect the book to open with Katsa going, "By the way, I was so bothered by all this intimidation and murdering that I decided to found a thriving secret organization to FIGHT CRIME AND ABUSES OF POWER all across the land! And it's going great, thanks for asking. Today I rescued someone's granddad, just because I don't want to live in a world where people's granddads get randomly kidnapped. AND IT WAS AWESOME."
Maybe it's because my expectations for Katsa's room to have agency were so low (probably due to The Hunger Games again -- sorry, Katniss!) but I was totally delighted by this and fell in love with Katsa from that moment on, big damn hero that she is. I spent the next four hundred pages watching Katsa do her badass thing and enjoyed it enormously.
My only real annoyance with the book was that the Big Bad was such an Inhuman Monster of Terribleness; there was room for a lot more subtle and interesting evil in there, given his particular superpowers, instead of "I am a sadist who murders cute fluffy animals and pursues whatever seems to be the most convoluted yet evil plan available at any given time."
I also can't decide how I feel about the final plot twist with Po. On the one hand, I'm kind of annoyed that it's yet another Blind But Not Really Because Superpowers. On the other hand, I guess I'm glad that the book did make it clear that being blind was still a problem and superpowers did not magically fix everything. But then on the third hand, despite all the effort that Cashore went to to establish this, I spent the entire last two chapters trying to repress a knee-jerk reaction of "Stop whining, Po, you can still BASICALLY see."
Anyway: I know at least a few of you posted about this book when it was still actually a trending topic! If you reviewed it I would love to get a link to your thoughts for my behind-the-times self. Or, you know, recap them here.
(Although, as a sidenote, The Hunger Games and I have now made our peace, due to a very pretty film soundtrack and some excellent costuming choices.)
I think part of the reason I put it off for so long is because I remember it being HUGE at about the same time that The Hunger Games was huge. Also, they both have stoic lady protagonists with names beginning with Kat, which meant I could not tell them apart. So I read The Hunger Games after months and months of hype, and was entertained enough but somewhat underwhelmed after months and months of hype, and sort of went "well, that's my stoic-lady-protagonist-called-Kat taken care of!" and forgot about both of them for a while.
It turns out I probably should have done it the other way around, because I actually liked Graceling way better than The Hunger Games!*
Part of this is that Katsa has SO MUCH agency. For those of you who have not actually read Graceling: Katsa is a magically skilled killer who reluctantly intimidates and murders people for her uncle, a semi-evil king. I knew this going in.
I did not expect the book to open with Katsa going, "By the way, I was so bothered by all this intimidation and murdering that I decided to found a thriving secret organization to FIGHT CRIME AND ABUSES OF POWER all across the land! And it's going great, thanks for asking. Today I rescued someone's granddad, just because I don't want to live in a world where people's granddads get randomly kidnapped. AND IT WAS AWESOME."
Maybe it's because my expectations for Katsa's room to have agency were so low (probably due to The Hunger Games again -- sorry, Katniss!) but I was totally delighted by this and fell in love with Katsa from that moment on, big damn hero that she is. I spent the next four hundred pages watching Katsa do her badass thing and enjoyed it enormously.
My only real annoyance with the book was that the Big Bad was such an Inhuman Monster of Terribleness; there was room for a lot more subtle and interesting evil in there, given his particular superpowers, instead of "I am a sadist who murders cute fluffy animals and pursues whatever seems to be the most convoluted yet evil plan available at any given time."
I also can't decide how I feel about the final plot twist with Po. On the one hand, I'm kind of annoyed that it's yet another Blind But Not Really Because Superpowers. On the other hand, I guess I'm glad that the book did make it clear that being blind was still a problem and superpowers did not magically fix everything. But then on the third hand, despite all the effort that Cashore went to to establish this, I spent the entire last two chapters trying to repress a knee-jerk reaction of "Stop whining, Po, you can still BASICALLY see."
Anyway: I know at least a few of you posted about this book when it was still actually a trending topic! If you reviewed it I would love to get a link to your thoughts for my behind-the-times self. Or, you know, recap them here.
(Although, as a sidenote, The Hunger Games and I have now made our peace, due to a very pretty film soundtrack and some excellent costuming choices.)
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Date: 2012-10-17 12:39 am (UTC)Interestingly, I didn't like Fire as much. It was good! I read it all! But I don't feel like I necessarily need to read it again the way I'd want to reread Graceling. Loved Bitterblue, though, which is a merge of the prior two--more from G, but a sprinkling of stuff from F, too.
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Date: 2012-10-17 01:22 am (UTC)