Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children's Literature 2009.
Sometimes nothing but a Grace can save you
In a world where people born with an exceptional skill, known as a Grace, are feared and exploited, Katsa carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing.
She lives under the command of her Uncle Randa, King of the Middluns, and is expected to carry out his dirty work, punnishing and torturing anyone who displeases him. Breaking arms and cutting off fingers are her stock-in-trade. Finding life under his rule increasingly unbearable Katsa forms an underground Council, whose purpose is to combat the destructive behavior of the seven kings – after all, the Middluns is only one of the seven kingdoms, and each of them is ruled its own king with his own personal agenda for power.
When the Council hears that the King of Liend's father has been kidnapped Katsa investigates... and stumbles across a mystery. Who would want to kidnap him, and why? And who was the extraordinary Graced fighter who challenged her fighting skills, for the first time, as she and the Council rushed the old man to saftey?
Something dark and deadly is rising in the north and creeping across the continent, and behind it all lurks the shadowy figure of a one eyed king...
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Kristin Cashore
Kristin Cashore is the author of the best-selling and award-winning Graceling Realm novels and the genre-bending novel Jane, Unlimited. Her books have been translated into over thirty languages. The New York Times Book Review has said of her work: “Some authors can tell a good story; some can write well. Cashore is one of the rare novelists who do both.” She lives in the Boston area.
