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.

Bitterblue

by Kriston Cashore
576 pages
ARC copy

Eight years after Graceling, Bitterblue is now queen of Monsea. But the influence of her father, a violent psychopath with mind-altering abilities, lives on. Her advisors, who have run things since Leck died, believe in a forward-thinking plan: Pardon all who committed terrible acts under Leck's reign, and forget anything bad ever happened. But when Bitterblue begins sneaking outside the castle--disguised and alone--to walk the streets of her own city, she starts realizing that the kingdom has been under the thirty-five-year spell of a madman, and the only way to move forward is to revisit the past. Two thieves, who only steal what has already been stolen, change her life forever. They hold a key to the truth of Leck's reign. And one of them, with an extreme skill called a Grace that he hasn't yet identified, holds a key to her heart.

I was graciously lent this arc copy, which I have been dying to read. But I must say I was left unsatisfied. It just took too many pages for Bitterblue to learn what she must and for them to finally locate and befriend the Dellians -- Lady Fire. And I had read the author's blog, which she says she's so happy about the cover "feeling like Bitterblue" and the significance of the keys. So I was expecting some grandness to the keys. Well, guess, what? They unlock a mystery. Really? And the way Bitterblue comes to own them was sort of anticlimactic for me.


And I like my endings all tidied up, which this story did not give. Yes, very unsatisfied indeed.