In a world where there were not so many somewhat more original, somewhat better constructed, and somewhat more well paced books featuring young women with special powers and difficult relatives, I would have rated this somewhat more highly. Graceling Katsa, an exemplary fighter from childhood with speed, endurance, accuracy is used as a enforcer by her uncle the King but has her own agenda. After meeting Po a graceling with different but similarly effective talents she realizes that she can and must claim her own freedom. ( )

Representation: N/A?
Trigger warnings: Death of a character in the past, blood depiction, near-death experience, animal death, hypothermia, blood depiction, physical injury
Score: Six points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

I recently added this book to my list and I had high expectations for this considering I've never read from this author before and this is a start of a series but unfortunately I have two statements to make, one I was underwhelmed by this and probably won't continue with the series and two, oh wait the library I got this from only has the first book and won't get the sequels since they got their last batch this year. Where do I even begin? It starts with the main character Katsa or Kat for short and she lives in one of the seven kingdoms of this world; that's where the first problems with this book emerge. First off is the worldbuilding, it's just not there, there's no explanation for how the kingdoms were formed or the Grace system, I can't wrap my head around it. Second off is the characters, they weren't that fleshed out and the only thing that made Katsa special is that she can kill people with her bare hands and she has different coloured eyes, the other people were meh and the pacing is slow to say the least. Now with that out of the way Katsa initially lives by herself until she meets this person called Prince Po who is a sovereign of a kingdom whose name I forgot and that is why readers consider this a "romantasy", a fantasy romance like Fourth Wing however I wasn't a fan of this one. Most of the book revolves around Katsa's new relationship with Po and there were some events that garnered some interest like that horse scene and meeting new people like Leck who dies later and Bitterblue, I struggled to find a connection with them even when Bitterblue got better at fighting with Katsa's help. That's essentially it. What a shame. ( )

A fun book with a really interesting main character. I liked the world building on this one a lot. It was hard for me to not jump right into the next book. The live story in the book was really touching also. This book was a lot of fun to read. I am glad the the scone one is out and the third one is coming in May. ( )

YA is not my genre (anymore) but I wanted to see what the fuzz was about.
I will not rate this because that would be like ordering at Mc Donalds and then complaining that you didn't get a 5-star 3-course menu. That is a bit of a lame comparison but I couldn't come up with something more fitting. Point is, I feel like rating this would be very unfair as I am very clearly not even close to the target audience. (My rating wouldn't even affect the 5th decimal place but it's about the principle.)

Aaaanyway, I generally lose patience with these types of stories very quickly but this one was quite entertaining and adorable for the first half or so.
The story is a bit all over the place without a clearly defined plot line but I actually very much enjoyed that too. Sadly the flaws of the writing became more and more apparent the further I read.
The final straw for me was the worst dialogue of a child I have ever read.
The child talked like a 40-year-old experienced narrator which robbed me of any and all motivation to continue.
I already got a bit bored with the slugging pace and the directionless plot after 7 hours but there wasn't anything particularly wrong beyond the normal genre clichées up to that point and this horrendous dialogue finally gave me the excuse to stop.
The writing ranges from exceptional to outright bad.
The biggest strength is probably how the book manages to convey the emotions of these characters. It's still a bit simplistic and preachy like a lot of relationship stuff in YA is, but I wasn't drawn in so effectively by an emotional landscape in a very long time.

I listened to the audiobook and it's one of those that have been recorded before people realized that all the music fluff is just distracting and generally detrimental.
For example, there is a very pg implicit sex scene which is accompanied by the most cringeworthy music as well as attempts by the narrator to make it more romantic and special by reading it in a different voice.
The scene was a bit cringeworthy already but as usual, the sound design puts a special emphasis on the worst parts to guarantee you can't miss it.
Not to mention the obnoxiously long music/soundscape transitions between chapters or even just scenes sometimes.
I have listened to books that managed to pull this kind of audio backdrop off and actually enhance the experience but those are very rare and this one is not one of them.
For such a successful book it's just embarrassing tbh.

Nothing about these characters or prose is even remotely believable or progressive. I tried three times. It's a big NOPE for me, especially after reading Jemisin and Sanderson