Graceling by Kristin Cashore

  Rating: 7/10

 The book Graceling by Kristin Cashore started out as a very slow read for me. It took me a while to get into the book. It may be because of Cashore’s slow development of the character, and also the fact that the world around her seemed too simple. It was as if we were supposed to take whatever she said at face value, when much of it doesn't make sense. First, I don’t like the name Graceling at all for what the people are called who are “graced” with their special skills. It sounds like something you would call a small child and it kept throwing me off.

Once I got past this part, I was busy trying to figure out all of these little details about the different kingdom’s with the majority being boring. I think it took me about 2 weeks just to get past that. The book picked up soon after Po was introduced. I liked his character a lot better than Katsa’s, because he draws you in from the beginning with his mysterious entrance. I immediately wanted to find out more about his character. The great thing about that is everything I learned about him made me like him even more.

I also felt like the journey they were on to save the kingdom and Bitterblue would never end. Every time I thought it should be over something new would happen. The worst part is I predicted the ending way before it happened, so the long wait was not really worth it.

Overall, Graceling was an OK book. I would give it a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10. I will not read this book over again, but once I got past the beginning, it was an enjoyable read. I am now on to reading the second book in the series, Fire. I have read that it is much different from Graceling so hopefully I will enjoy this one better. The thing about series is that unless the first book is horrible, it is hard not to read the next one just out of curiosity. Weigh in below, and let me know how you felt about this book. It has pretty good ratings online, so I'm curious to know if anyone else felt the way I did about the book.