I finished Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore last week sometime, but with everything that I had to do before England (and of course, left until the last minute) I haven’t had a chance to write about it. So, here it goes! Bitterblue is the sequel to Graceling and the companion novel to Fire, and all three books definitely come together in this novel. Eight years have gone by since the end of Graceling and Bitterblue has now become queen of Monsea. But she has a lot of work to do, given the state that her father left the kingdom in, which Bitterblue doesn’t really know the extent of, because her advisors keep her locked up in her tower most of the time. So Bitterblue starts sneaking out at night. And she finds out that her kingdom is in much more of a mess than she thought.
One issue that I had with this book wasn’t with the writing, it was the fact that Bitterblue was published so long after Graceling that I had difficulty remembering what events had lead up to this book and how all of the characters were connected. In one of the reviews of the book, someone said that you could read this one first and still have a handle on the series, but I definitely don’t think that is true. I would definitely recommend reading this one last, because it does reveal so much about the other two books. Graceling and Fire can pretty much be read in any order, I think. But Bitterblue definitely comes last.
Putting that fact aside, I definitely love Kristin Cashore’s writing style. She does a good job of putting the reader completely in the world she has created, and she creates characters that the readers care about. Readers want the characters to succeed. I must say, Bitterblue also doesn’t have a predictable story line, Cashore kept me guessing for the most part, which I definitely appreciate. Overall, I think Bitterblue is a successful book, one that I really enjoyed. But I think I’ll have to go back and read the other two to fully appreciate its wonderfulness.
In other news, I am leaving tomorrow for England and I am so excited! So for a month, I will switch from blogging about books to blogging about my adventures in England, which, undoubtedly will have something to do with books at some point. Until then, happy reading! 🙂