Mariana

It's a little slower than Graceling and Fire, but the exploration of history and memory and trauma requires the extra space I think. It feels more YA than the two previous books, despite its subject matter, and I didn't buy into the politics, especially towards the end. The resolution felt both oversimplified and unsatisfying to me. Regardless of the ways it fell flat for me, it did make me cry several times. Most notably when Fire shows Bitterblue how much bigger she is than the hurt she's feeling.

I'm not sure where to put this in my ranking of Agatha Christie novels but it's definitely a favorite. The characters are so vivid, and that's always what pulls me in with her writing, but I think this story relies on it in a way the others I've read don't. It reminds me of Wuthering Heights in a way, how the tragedy is all past and inescapable, the bittersweetness of the ending.... after it all, there is still possibility because there is still life, there is still youth....

and, of course, there's nothing I love as much as a misunderstood woman

I have read Graceling before, but it's been seven years and I knew I was going to get more out of it now than I did when I was a teenager. That being said, I wasn't prepared for how viscerally angry it made me. Reading it now, Katsa seems so much more vulnerable. Despite her physical power, she lives in constant fear and anxiety, primarily because other people feel unpredictable and unknowable to her. She has a hard time understanding the motivations and emotions of others and it makes her avoidant of forming relationships. No matter what her character or abilities are, she is perpetually on the outside of every conversation, every joke. She is vulnerable, sure, but she isn't immature. This is a fact that escapes most of the men in this book, which is the reason why I was filled with rage for the first half of the book. Once Katsa leaves the court, I started to feel better, and especially after she realizes that her Grace isn't killing. And, in the end, it's her relationship with Po that enables her to overcome her weaknesses, in every sense of the word. He teaches her to trust herself, and even when she loses control, it's him that pulls her back to herself. The ending is just the final manifestation of this, killing Leck not because he is threatening her or because she has broken free of his power, but because her loyalty and her instinct to protect Po is stronger than her own control.

This was such an unserious book .... I loved Giddon's continued character development and I did find myself liking him and Bitterblue together despite the truly alarming age gap but this was a silly book with a silly plot and very oversimplified political dynamics. It felt the most YA. I'm actually not sure how we went from Graceling and Fire to this, and it generally didn't feel like part of the series in any meaningful way. It was fun and I had a great time reading it but it just doesn't live up to its predecessors.