Graceling

Graceling

Author: Kristin Cashore

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Release Date: September, 2009

Series: 1 of 3 interconnected books, can serve as stand alone

My list of favorite books of all times is short and very unchangeable. One of the titles – The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton – has lived there since I was thirteen. I’m excited to add Graceling to this exclusive party. Yes, I loved this book that much.

Katsa (not to be mistaken for Katniss) is a Graceling, a child born with a special gift called a Grace which makes her, along with all other gracelings, the property of the king who just so happens to be her uncle. And lucky for him that he virtually owns her because Katsa’s particular skill is killing people. An unbeatable fighter, Katsa makes the perfect thug for carrying out her uncle’s brutal form of domination over his subjects. Katsa hates her life and, in an act of rebellion, establishes a secret council of others determined to help those who need it whether the king approves or not.

While on a mission to rescue the kidnapped father of another kingdom’s king, Katsa encounters Prince Po, a fellow graceling who is nearly her equal in fighting skills. Po has tracked down his kidnapped grandfather and is determined to solve the mystery of who did the deed and why. At first reluctant to become involved, Katsa decides to join Po in his journey for answers. The pair discover a dark force at work that, if not stopped, threatens everyone in their world. Along the way Katsa also learns much about the true nature of her Grace and what that means for her future. And even though she fights it with all she has, Katsa can’t ignore the feelings growing between her and Prince Po, feelings that challenge every preconceived notion she’s held about herself.

Katsa is an immensely compelling character. While she’s one of the deadliest forces in her world, Katsa sees herself as a prisoner who has no choices at all. In order to survive the isolation her grace has caused, she’s shut off any of her softer emotions, and she believes herself as truly incapable of loving anyone in a normal sense. As she comes to care for Po and his young cousin, Bitterblue, her resolve to avoid personal attachments begins to melt. She doesn’t change overnight, but her realization that she’s powerful in many ways and can control her own destiny is like a flower that blooms throughout the book.

Po is a swoon-worthy hero, strong enough to hold his own against Katsa but secure enough in himself to admit that, in the end, she is the better fighter. Rather than be put off by Katsa’s outwardly cold demeanor, he persists in breaking down her walls, and the moment when he confesses his true feelings is incredibly moving. At one point, Po has to make a heartbreaking sacrifice and I found myself tearing up, something I rarely do when reading words on a page. The romance between Katsa and Po left me breathless and is one of my favorites in any genre.

In addition to fantastic characters, the driving plot is well drawn. Graceling contains the most blood-chilling villain I’ve read in ages. I can’t discuss much without giving away key plot points, suffice it to say, as I realized how powerful the villain was and how much of a threat this person posed to both Katsa and Po, indeed, their entire universe, I honestly had no idea how they would ever prevail. I was on the edge of my seat for the entire last half of the book, truly terrified for Katsa and Po.

Graceling is a fantasy set in magical kingdoms full of different peoples and places, but Cashore manages to create this entire other world without losing the story in the minutia of world-building details. We learn enough to evoke a sense of time and place but the focus never wavers from the characters or their journey. While I enjoy fantasy for the creativity it displays, I read books for characters and plot, so I appreciated this fine balance between world building and story.

Most of all, I liked that Katsa is a strong YA heroine who is fully capable of saving herself. She comes to learn that she can allow herself to need others and can trust them to get her back without ever subverting her own power or sacrificing what she believes to be the right thing for her. Unlike in so many other uber-popular YA paranormal titles, Katsa’s love isn’t given easily or just because Po is oh-my-god-so-hot but is hard earned and well worth the effort. And this includes her own sense of self-worth, something she struggles to gain throughout the entire book. In the end, Katsa’s ability to love herself is the ultimate victory and the best happily ever after. 

I knew this book was a true keeper the second I finished it and, feeling slightly stunned, opened it back up and began reading it all over again. I simply didn’t want to leave the world of Katsa and Po.

Rating: Up All Night

Twilight

Twilight
Author: Stephenie Meyer
Publisher: Little, Brown Young Readers
Release Date: Hardback – October, 2005/paperback – September, 2006

Series: the Twilight series
Position in Series: Book 1 of 3 to date
Main Characters: Bella Swan, Edward Cullen
Sequel Bait: Jacob Black, Alice Cullen
Bad Guys: vampires who rely on human blood for sustenance

When Bella Swan moves from her mother’s house in Phoenix, AZ to live with her father in Forks, WA, her life changes far more dramatically than she could have ever imagined. Sure, she’s going from one of the sunniest places on earth to one of the rainiest. She’s also moving from a large city to a town where everyone knows everyone else. And she’s got to adjust to living with a father she barely knows while trying to navigate the social landmines pervasive in attending a new high school.

What she never expects when she moves to Forks, however, is to fall deeply in love. At least, not with someone like Edward Cullen.

From the first time Bella and Edward lay eyes on each other, sparks fly between them. Bella cannot understand why Edward, whom she finds too beautiful to be real, seems to despise her so completely when she’s never done so much as say hello to him. For his part, Edward cannot put enough space between himself and Forks High School’s newest student. But when Edward keeps Bella from being crushed in a freak car accident, she’s stunned not only that he bothered to help her at all, but that he somehow possesses the super-human strength that enabled him to stop a ton of speeding metal and glass without being injured himself.

Being tenacious and so completely fascinated by Edward and his equally beautiful sisters and brothers, Rosalie, Alice, Emmett and Jasper, Bella sets out to learn the Cullen family’s secrets. She gets some help from Jacob Black, a young native American, when he shares some of his tribe’s folklore with her about the cold ones, the blood drinkers who once tormented the Quileute people. Putting two and two together, Bella figures out that the Cullen family is actually a pack of vampires, a fact that is confirmed by Edward himself when Bella confronts him with the truth.

Despite his extreme reservations, Edward and Bella begin spending more and more time together. Before she knows what has happened, Bella has fallen madly in love with Edward. From the moment he saw her, Edward had been fighting his own attraction to Bella, an attraction that included more than just romantic interest but an intense form of blood lust rarely experienced by the vampire kind. Even though he long ago swore never to drink human blood again, Edward doubts his abilities to control himself around Bella. Being with her is a constant struggle against every instinct he has, yet he can’t find himself able to stay away.

As Bella becomes more involved with the Cullen family, her safety becomes endangered not only from Edward, but from outside forces beyond his control. Before she knows it, she’s on the run from other vampires who see her simply as a challenging meal, and Edward might not be able to save her.


First, I must stress that although Twilight is labeled a young adult title, is shelved in the young adult section at the bookstore and library, and features a young adult heroine/narrator, the story itself transcends age. I’m many years past being a young adult, yet I enjoyed every word.

Twilight is written in first person, so from the very beginning, the reader feels an immediate closeness to Bella. She’s a very likeable heroine: she doesn’t mope or complain any more than the average teen about having to start again in a new school. She’s resigned to it sucking, so we don’t get pages and pages of self-pity.

Her reaction to Edward’s initial open hostility toward her morphs naturally from dismay and confusion to an almost obsessive need to understand this unusual boy. When she begins to suspect the truth about Edward’s true nature, I didn't find her reaction as nearly shocked enough, as one might expect to be learning that vampires exist right next door. Bella seemed to take it all in stride, accepting the truth without a whole lot of skepticism or denial. Nor does she worry overmuch what it means that she's fallen in love with a non-human being. However, author Meyer has set the pace such that by the time Edward admits that he’s a vampire, Bella has traveled too far down the emotional path to turn back. We as readers like him, so we don't mind if he's a vampire. Why should she?

As a hero, Edward is nearly perfect. He’s beautiful. He’s intelligent (who wouldn’t be after nearly a hundred years of living). He’s sensitive and intuitive yet enough of an alpha-male to keep from looking poncy. I myself fell head over heels for him, so I could hardly blame Bella for the same. If anything, Edward might ring a little too perfect. His main faults are actually not faults at all because they rise out of his wanting to protect Bella from himself. This gives him a pass for any of his initial jerk-like behaviour once Bella learns the facts of Edward’s situation. He often falls into the trap of having seemingly bad habits that actually make him a cool hero: driving too fast, being too protective of Bella, being a mysterious non-bloodsucking creatue of the night. Since, like I said, I fell in love with Edward, I wouldn't change much about him, however. He's a model romance hero, 100% pure fantasy.

Edward’s fear for Bella’s safety given his almost overwhelming desire for her particular blood fuels the majority of the conflict between the couple. However, I feel it was given the short shrift given how rich in promise such a premise is. In the beginning, Edward doesn’t even try to fight his urges, figuring he’d be best off to simply move away. However, as their relationship grows deeper, he speaks often of the danger she could be in if he lost control. That being said, I found that Edward’s ability to keep his cool ran counter to what he was saying. I think I would have been more convinced of the star-crossed lovers aspect of their relationship had it been harder for Edward to keep his…er...fangs off Bella. There is a scene or two where some innocent kissing leads to things that Edward fears will throw him off his game, but he seems to overcome his issues almost a little too easily. While he does tell her that he's not sure they will ever be able to become intimately familiar, he certainly seems fine with all the touching and closeness they share, with nary a clue that he struggles desperately to keep from taking a big bite.

Meyer does an amazing job evoking the setting of Forks. You can almost smell the rain and envision the dark greens and blues of the wet forests. Forks itself serves as a separate character, and once the reasons behind the Cullen family’s decision to settle in such a place become clear, you can’t imagine the story being set any place else.

Another strength Meyer demonstrates is her ability to put a new spin on the vampire myth. Most of the traditional lore is explained away with unique answers – such as why vampires cannot go out in the sun. Too, she imbues her creatures with the ability to choose whether or not they want to partake of human blood. In effect, vampires are divided into two classes. Those like the Cullens who have alternate means of getting sustenance are firmly in the good-guy camp, although there are very few of this sort. Vamps who still feed on human blood aren’t necessarily portrayed as purely evil, however they do serve as the villains of the story.

While Edward and Bella’s blossoming relationship makes up the bulk of the story, Meyer does throw in an external action plot that doesn’t begin until three-quarters of the way through the book. I found this addition to be wholly un-necessary. While it did serve to magnify the differences between Edward’s type of vampire and all of the other vampires out there, the whole scenario felt tacked on, as if Meyer’s publisher told her she needed more action to liven up the book, or, even worse, some kind of damsel-in-peril scenario to remind us all how much Edward loves Bella. The villain was menacing, to be sure, but his fascination with Bella in particular felt very contrived and forced.

I’d rather Meyer would have beefed up the inherent conflict between Bella and Edward. Given that Edward himself poses the greatest danger to Bella, much more could have been done with his struggle to stay away from her or to learn to manage his urges in such a way so that he could get closer to her.

Actually, Meyer has on her website an exercise she did in which she shows Edward and Bella's first interactions from Edward's point of view. It does much to demonstrate the amount of torment Edward went through, and it almost make me wonder if her choice to stay in Bella's first-person POV for the entirety of Twilight might not have short-changed the readers, denying them the crucial Edward-side of the story. If her website is to be believed, she has tentative plans to explore Edward's side of the story in a full-length book. I'll be first in line to buy it if she follows through.

There is one other nitpick I had with the story. Edward and his brothers and sisters are all students at Forks High School. Meyer's mythology follows the construct that vampires remain eternally stuck at the age they were when converted, thus Edward will always look like a seventeen-ish year old, as do his "siblings". Too, there is a need for the family to establish a cover that allows them to live in Forks without drawing undo attention to themselves, which means the young-looking members would need to be in school. However, I cannot imagine how insanely boring it would be for Edward - a boy who has gone through medical school twice - to sit through high-school level classes. I can't believe that the whole home-schooling option wouldn't be used as a reasonable sham to keep the Cullen kids out of such tedium. Then again, if such was the case, Edward and Bella never would have met. Even so, I couldn't get that overarching problem out of my head every time a scene set at school came up.

In the end, however, Twilight kept me turning pages like nothing else. The love that Bella and Edward share is one of those soul-mate kind of things, where even though she is only a teenager, you can’t imagine her with anyone else for the rest of her life. Thankfully, but the time I got around to reading it, the sequel, New Moon, had already been released, so I didn't have to wait to get more of their world. I'm eagerly tapping my fingers for the third book in the trilogy.

Rating: All Nighter
Series Status: Stellar first installment.

Lover Awakened

Lover Awakened
Author: J.R. Ward
Publisher: Signet Eclipse
Release Date: September, 2006

Series: the Black Dagger Brotherhood series
Place in Series: Book 3 of 4 to date
Main Characters: Zsadist, Bella
Sequel Bait: Butch O’Neal, Phury, John
New Characters: Rehvenge, Sarelle, Lash
Back Burnered: Marissa, Mary, Beth, Rhage

I confess to having had an almost obsessive need to get my hands on Lover Awakened as soon as it hit store shelves. Zsadist has emerged as the Black Dagger Brotherhood warrior who most intrigues me, his damaged soul and seemingly irredeemable nature making him my favorite kind of hero. I was not disappointed, and I find Lover Awakened the best title in the series to date.

LA picks up about six weeks after the ending of Lover Eternal. Aristocratic vampire Bella has been kidnapped by a lesser who sees her as the exact image of his dead wife. The sadistic David keeps her trapped in a 3-foot diameter pipe buried deep in the ground, allowing her to come up only so he can watch her shower and mentally and emotionally torture her. She’s slowly going mad, nearly certain that all efforts to find her have been abandoned and she’s destined to spend all eternity in this hell.

Zsadist, the most tortured member of the BDB, is driving himself crazy trying to learn the fate of Bella and rescue her if there is any chance at all that she still lives. He had spurned her interest in him when they first met, convinced that no normal female would ever find him attractive or want him in any loving way. He views himself as ruined, destroyed by the first hundred years of his life he spent as a blood slave, subject to the sadistic needs of a mistress who used him both for nourishment and sexual amusement. But something about Bella touched him deeper than he can explain, and the idea that she's come to harm at the hands of the lessers is driving him even more insane than normal.

Through a series of lucky coincidences, the BDB learn that Bella is alive and where she is being held. Zsadist and the other brothers rush to her rescue, but not before she suffers horrible physical abuse at the hands of her captor. Unwilling to let anyone else care for her although unable to understand why, Zsadist insists that Bella stay with him until she is better.

Bella is grateful that Zsadist has rescued her, but as she gets to know the depth of suffering Zsadist had endured as a blood slave and how deeply his psyche has been damaged, she fears that even her love won’t be enough to heal him. Zsadist cannot accept that such a beautiful female of worth should have anything to do with him, and he does everything in his power to push her away. However, Bella soon develops needs that only Zsadist can meet, and he’s forced to face his own fears in order to help her.

Meanwhile, Zsadist’s twin brother Phury is struggling with his own attraction to Bella. After rescuing Zsadist from his bondage as a blood slave, Phury had taken a vow of celibacy. (An aside here to say I’m still not quite sure why, exactly, Phury is determined to remain celibate. I get that he feels guilty that it was Zsadist rather than himself that was kidnapped as an infant, but I will need some more to really accept such an extreme sacrifice.) As Phury spends more time with Bella, he begins to doubt his ability to keep his vow of celibacy, and when it becomes clear that Bella has chosen Zsadist above all others, Phury’s love for her becomes a torture he can barely stand.

John, whom we met in LE, has settled in with Wellsie and Tohrment. For the first time in his life, he has finally found happiness, a sense of belonging, and the love of a family. He throws himself into his training even though most of the other trainees are bent on making his life a living hell. He meets the sweet Sarelle, and everything finally begins to go his way. When tragedy strikes, he's one of the ones hit hardest of all.

Flat out the best part of this book is Zsadist’s journey. And Ward deserves much kudos because she never takes the easy way out. Most books starring tortured heroes allow for the hero to spurn the heroine to a point, then with not much more than a kiss or a hot night of sex or even an I love you, his damaged heart is healed. Not so with Zsadist. From page one through the last page in the book, you can sense Zsadist’s inner turmoil. Even after he comes to accept that he loves Bella and she him, he is not made whole. He continues to do everything in his power to deny and destroy their budding relationship.
Ward invokes the use of flashbacks to show us Zsadist’s horrific past rather than simply tell us about it, and I think the technique is key. Getting inside of his head as he becomes the blood slave of a mistress so twisted and sadistic – and knowing as we do that he has to suffer a century of her mental, physical and emotional abuse – does a great deal to aid our understanding about why Zsadist has the hang-ups he does. Why he cannot bear to be touched. Why he refuses to drink from another vampire and gets all of his sustenance from humans. Why he truly believes he is not nearly good enough for the pure and good-hearted Bella. He shows true signs of his psychological damage: Zsadist’s reaction the first time Bella asks to feed from him was a heartbreaking scene. This isn’t just a cardboard tortured hero who is “damaged” simply because the writer says so. We as readers learn why and we understand.

Bella is my favorite Ward heroine so far. While she fits the BDB female mold in that she doesn’t do a whole lot more than recover and be protected, this girl knows what she wants – Zsadist – and she doesn’t take no for an answer. Time and again Zsadist tries to redirect Bella’s affections toward Phury, whom he feels is far more worthy of her, yet Bella holds her ground. For whatever reason, Zsadist is the one she wants and she won’t accept any substitutes. I also enjoyed watching Bella stand up to Zsadist. From the first two books, we get the definite impression that Zsadist is someone no-one, not even the other brothers, wants to piss off. Yet Bella isn’t afraid of doing so.

As I remarked in my review of LE, I would say that Ward spends a little bit too much time in the head of the lessers, although the obsession the lesser David has with Bella is important to the plot and has ramifications that effect all of the brother, so is worthy, therefore, of exploration.

In LA, we meet Rehvenge, Bella’s autocratic and domineering brother. Through him we are introduced the concept of sehclusion (yes, there’s that off spelling that I find somewhat bothersome), in which an unmated female can be forced by the will of an older, male relative, to basically become not much more than chattel, unable to leave her home or do pretty much anything without specific permission. In theory such an action is meant to protect females, however anyone born within the past two hundred years would agree that it reeks of anti-feminism. I understand that this sehclusion, which Rehvenge plans to inflict upon Bella for her own protection, is necessary for certain time-sensitive plot developments. However, I was kind of disappointed in it. In the first two BDB titles, I never got the impression that this particular vampire society was so backward. Females were honored and protected, but never treated as property. I admit to my weakness for alpha-males, but I do draw the line at this sort of caveman-think. I hope it's not indicative of things to come.

Lover Awakened ups the ante significantly for Ward, as I can't imagine how she plans to top it. Next on deck is Butch's story, and his set-up hasn't proven nearly intriguing as Zsadist's was, so I'm not as excited about it. Too, I'm hoping that Ward doesn't shelf Zsadist now that his story has been told. He's become my favorite BDB brother, and I'd hate to have seen the last of him.

Rating: All Nighter
Status of Series: The best so far. Afraid the only way it can go is downhill