Krisitin Cashore’s novel, Graceling, takes place in the world she wrote of in Fire. The seven kingdoms are existing in a precariously balanced peace, one that owes more to the fact that any action could be fatal than any really commitment to peace, and Katsa has a Grace that is both formidable and frightening. Katsa’s Grace, her talent, is for fighting. She is faster, stronger, more skilled, and she is her king’s weapon. For all that he is her uncle, he uses her as a threat, a danger sent to terrify others, with little regard for her feelings or for the loneliness she feels as a weapon-made-human.

Cashore has a deft touch with her heroines. Like Fire, Katsa constantly questions and searches for meaning and connections in her life. She is isolated in her role as enforcer, but she has begun to stretch out, to form cautious alliances, and to make decisions that directly compete with the goals of her king. She leads a secret group that searches for ways to keep the peace, ways that would protect the innocent people in the seven kingdoms from the impulses of their rulers.

Inherent in these struggles for identity is complication, and Katsa is a complicated character. Her king’s use of her Grace has separated her from the rest of the court and left her with few friends. She struggles with the fear she inspires in others, and she has begun to chafe against the orders her king gives. Unhappy with the idea that she has been used as a petty enforcer, she begins to devise a plan that would allow her to leave the court behind and make her own decisions. Her need to discover who she really is will set her on a journey that will have repercussions throughout the seven kingdoms and reveal the truth of Katsa’s Grace and strength.

Katsa has been raised to think of herself as a violent killer, a danger to those around her and a weapon best kept under control by others. Cashore does not discount this upbringing, and Katsa’s growth from a weapon wielded by others to a woman with a mind of her own is convincing. She struggles with what she has done in the past and must fight against the habits of a lifetime spent solving the problems of others with violence and intimidation.

It is Katsa’s growth as a character, in fact, where the true action of the novel takes place. Although she does meet with danger on her journey and fights quite a vicious villain, it is her fight gain control of her life and her future, and to discover who she could be without the shadow of her violent talent,that sit at the heart of the novel.

Katsa does not make this journey alone. She acquires allies, rediscovers friends, and learns as she journeys that her Grace may not be as dark as she believes. It is refreshing, though, that Katsa struggles not to be “happy” or “in love” but to be complete and in control of her own life. The questions she asks are meaningful, and her search for answers in neither casual nor complete. What, after all, does it mean to be a weapon? Who, in the end, is responsible for the destruction it causes?

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