Some of you may have heard of a new book by Kristin Cashore called Graceling. I read both of her books last week and decided to review them together, since they're so closely linked.
Graceling is set in a world of Seven Kingdoms, ruled by your typical power hungry, violent kings. In this world some children are born with one eye of a different color than the other. They are called Gracelings, and they are the property of the king. A Grace is a special skill above and beyond what is normally considered humanly possible. There are Graced hunters, Graced cooks, and Graced acrobats. There are useless Graces, like being able to talk with grashoppers. Some people are Graced with mind-reading, or manipulative powers.
Fire is set on the other side of the mountains, in a kingdom beside the sea. Fire's kingdom has never heard of the Seven Kingdoms, nor have the Seven Kingdoms heard of the Dells. There are no Gracelings in the Dells, but there are monsters. Monsters are breathtakingly, irritably beautiful, and they possess mind control. There are monsters in every race; monster horses, monster fish, monster bugs, and monster people.
Graceling's protagonist is a young girl Graced with fighting. Ever since her uncle, the king, found out about her Grace he's used her to torture and intimidate his enemies, sometimes performing as his executioner. She hates her uncle, she hates what she does with him, and she hates herself for doing it.
Fire is the last of the human monsters. She hides herself away from the world afraid of becoming what her father was. Her father was the closest confident of the king, and together they led the Dells into ruin. In the aftermath of that she tries to stay as far away from the King's City as possible, afraid of what the new rulers must think of her.
I loved Fire. But with Graceling I have some reservations.
The two stories are very similar. The two protagonists are very similar, and they fight with the same issues. But their stories and attitudes are vastly different.
Graceling's protagonist never wants to marry, and doesn't want children. The entire romantic theme of the book revolves around her deciding to take a lover instead of marrying him. The romance was a little gagging, and definitely a wordly view. That was my biggest problem with the book, and it points out everything that's wrong with most secular fiction. It's a very good example of what portraying Godly romance is not.
Fire, however, wants children terribly. She wants them, but she knows she can never have them. She's the last of the human monsters, and she intends to stay that way. The world doesn't need more of her kind, so she vows to never have children. And it breaks her heart. There are still a lot of unmarried relationships in this book I could have lived without, but she doesn't glorify it the way she does in Graceling.
Having warned you about Graceling, and saying "read at your own risk," can I rave about Fire?
I loved Fire. The character arcs, the relationships, the world, the cobha, the settings, it was all beautiful. You could see it, and feel it. You could sense everything the character went through. It was remarkable, and it was breathtakingly beautiful.
The author has the gift of subtly revealing things. Over and over she set things up, referring to ancient history, and then you get so caught up in the present you forget about it, until something snaps into place and pulls it together. She does this not once, but over and over. When you think you've learned everything you discover you forgot something else.
And she never comes out and tells you either. She reveals it all in half thought through sentences that make perfect clarity in spite of themselves. It's a technique I've only seen equaled in my favorite-ever series The Riddlemaster.
Fire is good, Fire is awesome. It's funny, it's sad, it's heartbreaking. I highly recommend it. I think it's the best book I've read since Pegasus.
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Really? I found it horribly boring and rather irritating at the same time.