Graceling

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.