NEW BOOKS: Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Reading and updating this blog have sadly been put on the back burner for the past few weeks due to some extenuating circumstances. Firstly, I'm living in a different state for work, doing a job that requires me to drive around to different schools all day, which is exhausting (and then teach more at night). Secondly, I am a part time guardian for my younger siblings and have spent the last few weeks getting them a house and moving them in and organising their lives. Thirdly (and strangely) my uncle murdered someone on the weekend, which is just the icing on the cake that demonstrates how weird my family is.

All of that aside, I am about halfway through A Clash of Kings, and it's a very slow journey - usually I fall asleep before I even finish a chapter. It hasn't helped that I still have not been able to get ahead of the TV series (which is so freaking amazing I can't stop!).

But today I went and bought Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore, which I have been awaiting since Fire was released. I really really loved Graceling and Fire so I have high hopes for Bitterblue, which is in fact almost twice the size of its predecessors.

"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 also found a bookstore that was all half-price (closing down, big surprise) and so I bought The Ragged Man and The Grave Thief by Tom Lloyd - as I already have The Twilight Herald, I now only need book one, The Stormcaller (and then I might actually read them).