A Review of Graceling by Kristin Cashore
A Killer Female Heroine Takes on Injustice and Male Domination
Jun 30, 2009
This talent, or Grace, defines their position in society, often setting them apart from society overall. Katsa's talent, so it seems, is killing. She is stronger, faster, and deadlier than any soldier, and has been from the age of eight.
While it is enough that Cashore has created a female lead character that is strong, intense and never second best, what she has also done is created depth and tension using sociological subplots.
Patriarchal Domination
This theme had every chance to become preachy and irritating, but instead, she had her character fighting actual villains, not all men. The man controlling her movements, King Randa, is cruel and devious, and surrounds himself with the same kind of men.
He uses Katsa as his enforcer, sending her out to break fingers and such of those who have upset him in some way. Ashamed of her Grace, she feels she has no other place in society, so continues to do as he commands.
King Leck, too, uses and abuses the women he "owns", and kills one of them for sport right in front of her daughter, Po and Katsa. They are able to take ultimate revenge when Katsa and Po kill him in a fair contest.
It is when she suddenly realizes that there is no reason for her to continue doing his will when she could be helping people rather than hurting them that she begins to develop. She chooses to never belong to anyone again, and this includes marriage.
Love and All of its Complexities
As a woman trained to kill, Katsa has been feared all her life, making impossible any emotional connection except for that with her childhood nurse. The men she rides with respect her, like her, but are always wary of her temper, as she can kill with just one hand.
When she meets another fighter, nearly as good and almost as fierce as she is, Katsa is thrown into a world of possibility. With the strangely named Po, she develops a new identity, not as a killer, but rather as a survivor. She learns to trust and decides that the rest of her life will be spent with Po, but never as his wife.
The beauty of this is that although they will never marry, they can stay together, in love, without ever owning one another. Po accepts Katsa for what she is, temper and better abilities and all, and loves her spirit.
The love of friends is beautiful and unique in this story as well. Prince Raffin, sweet and effeminate in some ways, is Katsa's best friend, and they both assume growing up that they will one day marry. It is only after Katsa flees the rule of King Randa and falls in love with Po that she realizes that will never happen. But on her return, their friendship is just as strong, if not stronger, than it has ever been. Without hitting the reader over the head with it, Cashore shows us that love really does make us better people.
Other themes include that of social boundaries and how people will do whatever necessary to survive, especially under a harsh rule, loyalty and how to determine where your loyalties should lie when the world becomes a confusing and dark place.
The AuthorGraceling (Orion, 2008 ISBN: 9780575084490) is Kristin Cashore's first novel. The prequel to Graceling, Fire, comes out in October 2009, and the third in the trilogy, tentatively titled Bitterblue (one of the characters in Graceling), is a work in progress.
 |
