![\"Graceling\"](\"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/09\/IMG_20160913_152645_hdr-300x300.jpg\")
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I bought a copy of Graceling<\/a>, by\u00a0Kristin Cashore<\/a>.<\/p>\n Description from Goodreads:<\/strong> When she first meets Prince Po, Graced with combat skills, Katsa has no hint of how her life is about to change.<\/em><\/p>\n She never expects to become Po’s friend.<\/em><\/p>\n She never expects to learn a new truth about her own Grace – or about a terrible secret that lies hidden far away…<\/em><\/p>\n Review:<\/strong> I thought Katsa was a marvelously strong female characters, but also able to be compassionate and kind. (Not just a man with tits, which is a very common misrepresentation of strong women in my experience.) In fact, learning this fact was one of her biggest challenges of the book.<\/p>\n I liked seeing a common gender trope turned on its head, as it’s usually the tortured hero, instead of a heroine. The few other times I have encountered this, it’s been accompanied by an inference that she struggles with her own violence because she’s female and a man wouldn’t be so bothered, because he’s strong enough to handle it. Making her reluctance to kill a gendered fault, not a moral dilemma. I never felt that here, even as Katsa fought to move past being little more than a brute. It was personal growth, not personal weakness.<\/p>\n We had male\/female platonic friendships. We had supportive female\/female friendships. (It passes the Bechdel test.) We had a same sex couple. We had a male romantic partner that was empathic, expressive and liked pretty things. We had a romantic pairing that was presented as valid, even when it didn’t end in wedding bells and baby bonnets. We had men willing to accept a woman as their leader and be more skilled than themselves, without feeling humiliated. So much to appreciate.<\/p>\n I did think Katsa’s dislike of dresses and hair and such pretty things compromised the authors attempt to make her both strong and female. Why can’t she be a strong fighter and like female things? It’s like she can be female and strong, but not feminine and strong. She can remain a woman, but she has to give up the trappings of her gender before she can be convincingly strong and valiant? (This is one of the few man-with-tits strong female character traps I noticed Cashore falling into.)<\/p>\n This and some of Katsa’s obliviousness and ‘specialness’ felt a cliched. As was the use of sexual deviance\u00a0to make the villain especially evil. This is plot device that has been used so often that it’s lost all effectiveness for me. I see it and think, well, the author just grabbed a pre-formed baddie for this one, didn’t she? Sexual deviance is frequently used in books to telegraph that a man is not just a bad man (a bad man might just be violent), but a very bad man and if he targets children a very, very bad man. No depth or exploration of character needed, because these actions are already conveniently placed on the continuum of evil for reader connivance. Plus, I didn’t really think it matched the tone of the res of the book.<\/p>\n Lastly, I thought there was a notable change of pace between the first and the second half of the book and Katsa was a little too resilient, accomplishing things that really should have killed her, even with her Grace. But all and all, I enjoyed this book.<\/p>\n What I’m drinking<\/a>: A sample of Gwy-u Latte<\/a>, given to me by the proprietor of Traveling Tea<\/a>, when I last visited. I’d mentioned that I enjoyed chicory and she thought I might enjoy Gwy-u Latte tea. I did, very much. It’s a\u00a0“green guayusa herbal honeybush rooibos blend.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I bought a copy of Graceling, by\u00a0Kristin Cashore. Description from Goodreads: Katsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight – she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[231,61,1331,118,154,357],"class_list":["post-11508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-booksbook-review","tag-book-review","tag-fantasy","tag-kristin-cashore","tag-romance","tag-ya","tag-young-adult"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11508","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11508"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11508\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20244,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11508\/revisions\/20244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11508"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11508"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sadieforsythe.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11508"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nKatsa has been able to kill a man with her bare hands since she was eight – she’s a Graceling, one of the rare people in her land born with an extreme skill. As niece of the king, she should be able to live a life of privilege, but Graced as she is with killing, she is forced to work as the king’s thug.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWell, that was a pleasant surprise. I went through a YA phase a couple years ago, but almost every YA book I’ve read since them has made me all sorts of ragey. This was an exception.<\/p>\n
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