Graceling Character Analysis

It is perhaps uplifting to have a teenage heroine who purges her precious hair because it gets in her way living in a world of teens obsessed with their self-image. Kristin Cashore’s unconventional and engrossing first novella, “Graceling,” has such a heroine. Katsa is hard-hitting, stubborn, beautiful, and consumed by unrelenting ethical concerns. She is particularly serious; one could say she lacks a sense of humor.
The story is set in a rich fantasy world where children born with extreme aptitudes, called Graces, are “Gracelings.” These Grace¬lings occupy an aggravated and difficult place in their kingdoms, as they are both spurned and respected by ordinary people, but nevertheless exploited by kings. Katsa’s Grace happens to be murder.
This atypical talent is discovered when, as an 8-year-old, she inadvertently kills a distant cousin who is leering at women servants in his castle. Her uncle, the king, recognizes the potential of Katsa’s power and begins to train her. He transforms his niece into his creature, his own private female assassin. He compels her to do the dirty work of the high court: inflicting punishment on his enemies, pacifying those who dare to defy him. As one might imagine, the adult world in “Graceling” is illogical, capricious, harsh — the youths band together into a clandestine assembly, which Katsa summons to guard the innocent and right the iniquities of egotistical kings. Katsa comes from from the tradition of heroines like Pippi Longstocking, who scandalize the adult world with incredible exploits of bodily power like lifting a stallion or fighting a pirate. Katsa gets into a scuffle with a mountain lion and wins. She subdues an entire brigade of sentinels. To put it simply, she upturns every physiological truism and traditional stereotype of feminine ineptitude, which is a large part of her appeal. She is the girl’s dream of female power unleashed.
On one of her underground assignments, Katsa comes across another Grace¬ling, Prince Po, who can read minds. After a great deal of strife, Katsa finally emancipates herself from her despotic uncle, and together she and Po attempt to save his young cousin Princess Bitterblue from her clinically insane father, King Leck, who possesses a hazardous and incomprehensible Grace. Many vexing escapades