brigid | 30 Days of Books: Day 13

Mirrored from brigidkeely.com/wordpress.

Day 13 – Favorite childhood book OR current favorite YA book (or both!)

My current favorite YA book is Graceling by Kristin Cashore. While it has its flaws (the central character, while female, has no female friends other than her much older mother-figure maid, causing it to fail the letter of The Bechdel Test, for instance) it’s a very well written book following the coming of age of a young woman with a power– a “grace”– that is… not very feminine. She’s a tool, a slave, owned by a king and he sets her to harass and kill– to make examples of– people who oppose him or don’t do his wishes.

She rebels against him.

She also doesn’t want to get married, and doesn’t want to have kids. She falls for a dude, they talk about non-love stuff, and they have sex. Sex! Unmarried sex! Enjoyable, guilt-free sex! She uses birth control! Her disinterest in marriage and kids is treated in the book as an option, neither good nor bad, although some characters think she’ll change her mind when she meets the right person, or whatever. This is one of the things that stuck out the most to me, reminding me of just how incredibly earth shaking Tamora Pierce’s Lioness Rampant books were when I read them as a youth. There are other similarities as well.

Katsa is brave and physically strong, moving in a man’s world but still at disadvantage solely because of her gender. She is a warrior, extremely skilled, and still discounted because she is female. She makes her own choices and decisions, she seizes her own path, and she doesn’t need saving. In fact, she saves a powerful male character; a man who in some ways is reduced to the status of love interest. It’s also excellently written.