Bitterblue

by Kristin Cashore
539 pages

Bitterblue is an 18-year-old queen trying to help her realm recover from her father's reign.  Leck had psychologically tortured and controlled many in the kingdom, and many people were still trying to recover from the atrocities committed during Leck's reign.  Bitterblue feels like her advisors are hiding things from her, and strikes out on her own to discover what life is really like in  Monsea so that she can better serve her people and rectify the wrongs of the past.

I did not enjoy Bitterblue as much as I enjoyed Fire and Graceling.  Bitterblue was not quite as action-packed as the other two novels and focused more on the psychological and political aspects of running a kingdom.  I also thought they could have gotten to some of the action a little sooner, but the pacing was okay.  I was disappointed that Bitterblue did not have romantic closure like Fire and Katsa did.  I feel like the trilogy would have had more continuity if Cashore had chosen a different love interest for Bitterblue and allowed that romance to develop more fully.  Don't get me wrong---strong women don't have to have a man...but the romance factor was something I really liked about the other two books in this trilogy.