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More stuff on the Graceling Realm
Jul. 31st, 2012 11:14 pmHello Internets,
I read two books this weekend! Since they are part of a series, I will review them both in the same post. The books in question are Fire and Bitterblue, the sequels to Kristen Cashore's Graceling which I read a few weeks ago.
Fire takes place in a country called the Dells, which is located on the other side of a large mountain range from the seven kingdoms that make up the Graceling realm. The Dells and its neighboring country (called... Pikkia? I think?) are so isolated from the other seven countries that they do not actually know they exist, and the seven kingdoms do not know the Dells exist either. Only one character crosses between them, and that character is the evil King Leck, villain of Graceling, except that he is a small child because Fire takes place about forty years before Graceling does. In the Dells, there are no Gracelings. Instead, there are monsters. "Monster" is a term used for any of several species of brightly colored, impossibly beautiful versions of animal species with mind-control powers. So there are monster mice, and monster cats, and monster horses, and the monster versions of predator species (like monster raptors and monster leopards, etc.) are extra vicious and like to eat people. There are also, on occasion, monster humans. Our protagonist is a red-headed female monster human named Fire, whose father, also a monster, was a sadistic, narcissistic, control-freak psychopath who used to be chief advisor to a very weak-minded, drug-addicted king. It is Fire's dad's fault that, even several years after his death and the death of the king, the Dells are a dangerous mess with a decaying infrastructure and are constantly at the brink of war with their neighbors and the more ambitious members of their nobility. The book deals with a lot of themes about power, privacy, and autonomy, as Fire, who is not a sadistic narcissist, tries to figure out how and if to use her power "for good," and what that means. Fire is also a much more "feminine" sort of heroine than Katsa, and I think it's handled very well: she's not a warrior, and her powers are mental/emotional, and they are presented as very powerful and able to be even more dangerous and damaging when misused than physical violence, because they mess with the core of what makes people who are they are. She is very physically beautiful--actually inhumanly so, because she is not a regular human--which brings a lot of issues about beauty and entitlement right to the forefront of the narrative. Fire also really, really does want to have children, which is presented as a very real and valid thing (and I'd hope would put the kibosh on the "Kristen Cashore hates marriage and babies" whining... but hoping doesn't make it so!), and she has to deal with her torn feelings on wanting children and the ethics of bringing more "monsters" with such a horrible amount of power over others into the world. Other deep dark issues explored include the ethics of family loyalty and betrayal when your family is a major source of evil in the world, why sexual double standards and possessiveness are totally not sexy, and nontraditional conceptions of family.
...I still think this is a moderately fluffy YA fantasy novel suitable for beach reading, but this is because my baseline measurement for "sad dark serious business" in fantasy these days is ASoIaF. Most of which I did read poolside.
The third novel, Bitterblue, takes place back in the Graceling realm, mostly in Monsea, eight years after the end of Graceling. It is about Queen Bitterblue, who was crowned when she was ten and is now eighteen and ready to stop being a useless pawn of her advisors and actually rule in her own right. Bitterblue is beginning to feel supremely alienated from her kingdom, due to being shut up in a tower doing paperwork all day, and starts a habit of sneaking out at night to attend story rooms and hang out with a wacky printer dude named Teddy and his sexy friend who is a Graceling but doesn't know what his Grace is. (Said friend is particularly sexy because he is a Leinid and the Leinid are all very sexy; you can tell because they all have piercings and tattoos.) (...I am starting to see some interesting themes running through a lot of modern YA fantasy.) From here we uncover: 1) shocking things about the actual state of the nation; 2) shocking things about stuff that happened during King Leck's reign and what the hell he thought he was doing, and 3) a massive, weird conspiracy about trying to suppress information about, like, basically everything. There is lots of fun stuff about conspiracies and ciphers and libraries and the importance of literacy and historical records, which ranges from intellectual nerdfests about language and coding to deep thoughts about the role of knowing the past in (a) not repeating it (b) identity (c) democracy (or, in this case, a non-despotic monarchy) (d) being human and (e) important stuff in general. A lot of our old favorite characters show up, such as Katsa and Po and Raffin and Bann, and even Giddon, who has grown up a lot in eight years and now doesn't suck anymore. Cashore seems to be making an effort to make up for falling into the "character gets disabled; fixes disability with magic" trope with Po at the end of Graceling, and a lot of the stuff involving Po in this book revolves around the ways his Grace (which is not actually handfighting, but people think it is) is not an exact replacement for sight, and the challenges (including ethical ones) of trying to keep both his real Grace and his blindness secret. I think it makes for some very interesting storytelling, but as to how far it goes towards ameliorating the problematic issues brought up by the first book, I am not sure I am well-informed enough to judge. Also, there is stuff about the Dells--and quite a lot of it, considering that for the bulk of the book, the reader is the only person who knows the Dells actually exist. (Yay, dramatic irony!) My absolute favorite supporting character in this one is the super-crotchety librarian, whose name is "Death," rhymes with "teeth." His Grace is reading hyperfast and remembering everything he's ever read. I would eat a puppy fetus to have that power; I seriously would.
Also, because this is a teenage girl fantasy book rather than aregular teenage boy fantasy book, in addition to the romance with the sexy tattooed Leinid, all of Bitterblue's male friends who are younger than her parents are apparently very attractive. In my own personal fantasy world in which everyone within ten years of my own age is fabulously attractive (and hip and stylish and smells nice), the boys do not fall quite so neatly into two and only two discrete camps of "the ones with whom there is unresolved sexual tension" and "the ones who are gay" (seriously, there are a lot of really awesome gay characters in this series who are not defined primarily by their gayness, but once you figure out the gimmick, their gayness is telegraphed really clearly right from the beginning, due to lack of sexual tension with whatever protagonist we're dealing with), but perhaps that is just me.
This entire series comes with a massive trigger warning for rape and child abuse and murder and psychological trauma and self-harm and basically serious exploration of really serious issues of extremely serious badness. Generally not as Crapsack World-y as Game of Thrones or Battlestar Galactica or other series where nobody can catch a break ever and anvils fall on people's heads, but there is still some pretty dark stuff buried in amongst the wacky hijinks and conspiracies and jewelry theft and weird jokes about herbal contraceptives.
Additionally, the subsequent books do a better job than the first of actually talking about the societal and legal expectations of marriage and family and civil rights and things. So that's a definite plus.
I read two books this weekend! Since they are part of a series, I will review them both in the same post. The books in question are Fire and Bitterblue, the sequels to Kristen Cashore's Graceling which I read a few weeks ago.
Fire takes place in a country called the Dells, which is located on the other side of a large mountain range from the seven kingdoms that make up the Graceling realm. The Dells and its neighboring country (called... Pikkia? I think?) are so isolated from the other seven countries that they do not actually know they exist, and the seven kingdoms do not know the Dells exist either. Only one character crosses between them, and that character is the evil King Leck, villain of Graceling, except that he is a small child because Fire takes place about forty years before Graceling does. In the Dells, there are no Gracelings. Instead, there are monsters. "Monster" is a term used for any of several species of brightly colored, impossibly beautiful versions of animal species with mind-control powers. So there are monster mice, and monster cats, and monster horses, and the monster versions of predator species (like monster raptors and monster leopards, etc.) are extra vicious and like to eat people. There are also, on occasion, monster humans. Our protagonist is a red-headed female monster human named Fire, whose father, also a monster, was a sadistic, narcissistic, control-freak psychopath who used to be chief advisor to a very weak-minded, drug-addicted king. It is Fire's dad's fault that, even several years after his death and the death of the king, the Dells are a dangerous mess with a decaying infrastructure and are constantly at the brink of war with their neighbors and the more ambitious members of their nobility. The book deals with a lot of themes about power, privacy, and autonomy, as Fire, who is not a sadistic narcissist, tries to figure out how and if to use her power "for good," and what that means. Fire is also a much more "feminine" sort of heroine than Katsa, and I think it's handled very well: she's not a warrior, and her powers are mental/emotional, and they are presented as very powerful and able to be even more dangerous and damaging when misused than physical violence, because they mess with the core of what makes people who are they are. She is very physically beautiful--actually inhumanly so, because she is not a regular human--which brings a lot of issues about beauty and entitlement right to the forefront of the narrative. Fire also really, really does want to have children, which is presented as a very real and valid thing (and I'd hope would put the kibosh on the "Kristen Cashore hates marriage and babies" whining... but hoping doesn't make it so!), and she has to deal with her torn feelings on wanting children and the ethics of bringing more "monsters" with such a horrible amount of power over others into the world. Other deep dark issues explored include the ethics of family loyalty and betrayal when your family is a major source of evil in the world, why sexual double standards and possessiveness are totally not sexy, and nontraditional conceptions of family.
...I still think this is a moderately fluffy YA fantasy novel suitable for beach reading, but this is because my baseline measurement for "sad dark serious business" in fantasy these days is ASoIaF. Most of which I did read poolside.
The third novel, Bitterblue, takes place back in the Graceling realm, mostly in Monsea, eight years after the end of Graceling. It is about Queen Bitterblue, who was crowned when she was ten and is now eighteen and ready to stop being a useless pawn of her advisors and actually rule in her own right. Bitterblue is beginning to feel supremely alienated from her kingdom, due to being shut up in a tower doing paperwork all day, and starts a habit of sneaking out at night to attend story rooms and hang out with a wacky printer dude named Teddy and his sexy friend who is a Graceling but doesn't know what his Grace is. (Said friend is particularly sexy because he is a Leinid and the Leinid are all very sexy; you can tell because they all have piercings and tattoos.) (...I am starting to see some interesting themes running through a lot of modern YA fantasy.) From here we uncover: 1) shocking things about the actual state of the nation; 2) shocking things about stuff that happened during King Leck's reign and what the hell he thought he was doing, and 3) a massive, weird conspiracy about trying to suppress information about, like, basically everything. There is lots of fun stuff about conspiracies and ciphers and libraries and the importance of literacy and historical records, which ranges from intellectual nerdfests about language and coding to deep thoughts about the role of knowing the past in (a) not repeating it (b) identity (c) democracy (or, in this case, a non-despotic monarchy) (d) being human and (e) important stuff in general. A lot of our old favorite characters show up, such as Katsa and Po and Raffin and Bann, and even Giddon, who has grown up a lot in eight years and now doesn't suck anymore. Cashore seems to be making an effort to make up for falling into the "character gets disabled; fixes disability with magic" trope with Po at the end of Graceling, and a lot of the stuff involving Po in this book revolves around the ways his Grace (which is not actually handfighting, but people think it is) is not an exact replacement for sight, and the challenges (including ethical ones) of trying to keep both his real Grace and his blindness secret. I think it makes for some very interesting storytelling, but as to how far it goes towards ameliorating the problematic issues brought up by the first book, I am not sure I am well-informed enough to judge. Also, there is stuff about the Dells--and quite a lot of it, considering that for the bulk of the book, the reader is the only person who knows the Dells actually exist. (Yay, dramatic irony!) My absolute favorite supporting character in this one is the super-crotchety librarian, whose name is "Death," rhymes with "teeth." His Grace is reading hyperfast and remembering everything he's ever read. I would eat a puppy fetus to have that power; I seriously would.
Also, because this is a teenage girl fantasy book rather than a
This entire series comes with a massive trigger warning for rape and child abuse and murder and psychological trauma and self-harm and basically serious exploration of really serious issues of extremely serious badness. Generally not as Crapsack World-y as Game of Thrones or Battlestar Galactica or other series where nobody can catch a break ever and anvils fall on people's heads, but there is still some pretty dark stuff buried in amongst the wacky hijinks and conspiracies and jewelry theft and weird jokes about herbal contraceptives.
Additionally, the subsequent books do a better job than the first of actually talking about the societal and legal expectations of marriage and family and civil rights and things. So that's a definite plus.
