KRISTIN CASHORE, STOP TRYING TO MAKE ME CRY

I just read this on the blog of my favourite author, Kristin Cashore.

I don't quite know why this moved me, but it did. The first thing I'd like to say is that, Ms Cashore, the author does matter. Without the author, there would be no book. And when somebody falls in love with a book, the likelihood is that they do actually think about that person who sat down and spent their time and effort to write that book.

Secondly, I don't know about anyone else, but I don't use your books for coasters, Ms Cashore. I don't use any books as coasters, I have too much respect for them. I may have realised my love for your books a little too late to stop a few slightly dog-eared pages and broken spines on Graceling and Fire (my copy of Bitterblue is a hardback. And I did try very hard with the spine of Fire, so I'm sorry I still broke it), but I most certainly do not and never will use them as coasters. :)

Thirdly, one day, one of those letters in one of those piles of fan mail will be from me. One day. :)

A Fictional Setting Brought To Life

This photo appeared on Kristin Cashore's blog a day or two ago. It is my belief from this blog that she's in Iceland at the moment, and this is one of the pictures she took of her travels. If you have read Fire you may well know what I thought of as soon as I saw this picture (particularly because of the rocks):

Kristin Cashore, you have found The Dells.

It made me very happy, so I thought I'd share. :) The blog post this picture is on can be found here.

TO READ: Bitterblue

SPOILER ALERT FOR GRACELING

(also, click here for a series of letters between the characters of Graceling and Bitterblue set before the beginning of Bitterblue, written by Kristin Cashore)

The third instalment in Kristin Cashore's The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy is Bitterblue, set eight years after the first book Graceling and on the same side of the mountains as the aforementioned novel - in the kingdom of Monsea, where young Queen Bitterblue now rules, still attempting to help her country recover. This book most certainly has the most complicated plotline of the series, and the darkest themes as well.

Bitterblue is the coming-of-age story of a young queen struggling to find herself and to take control of a kingdom she is supposedly in charge of. Feeling disconnected from the people she rules, Bitterblue begins to sneak out into the city at night to hear stories of her late father, a corrupt king, and it is there that she meets Teddy and Saf - two young men known as truthseekers who use thievery and publishing to try and put right what they believe to be wrong in the world, although there are many who would take extreme measures to silence them. And so it is just as the web of lies set up to make her transition to the throne as a ten-year-old is beginning to fall apart that Bitterblue starts spinning her own web of lies to hide from her advisors that she is trying to uncover the truth, and to hide from her newfound friends the power she truly wields.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Bitterblue; I loved seeing characters we met in Graceling return and I very much liked how relatable the character of Bitterblue is - she might be a queen, but that doesn't mean she can't get just as annoyed and confused as the rest of us (what I would like to know is, who had she been hanging around with who would teach her to use the word "balls" as a curse word?). Of course I particularly love Cashore's writing style, and her use of humour (there are a number of brilliant quotes I could point you to which I found rather amusing). Overall, I would say that Bitterblue is my least favourite in the series - however, please consider that there are only three of them, and that they are all favourite over pretty much all other books I have read.

TO READ: Fire

Fire by Kristin Cashore is the second in her The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, however not only is it technically a prequel to first in the series Graceling but it isn't actually set in the Seven Kingdoms at all. In a land bordering the Seven Kingdoms to the east of an impassable mountain range known as The Dells, approximately forty years before the events of Graceling. This is, I think, my favourite book. My one favourite, ever. (And such a pretty cover the British edition has!!)

In The Dells - one of only two kingdoms known to its people, the other being the northern sea-faring land of Pikkia - there exists extraordinary creatures which can appear as any species, be it cat, mouse, wolf, raptor... These monsters, as they are called, can be distinguished by their unnaturally vibrant colours, and have the ability to take control of others' minds, which is added to the almost hypnotic effect their beauty has on some.

Seventeen-year-old Fire (so named for her flaming hair) is the only human monster alive, and is hated by many - sometimes for jealousy, sometimes for her father's legacy, but mostly for her venomous mind. Fire hides herself away on her late father's estate in a remote corner of the kingdom, where her kind-hearted neighbour raised her along with his son Archer, Fire's lifelong friend, in the hopes of deflecting all attention. But Fire isn't safe, not even here.

The Dells is a kingdom still recovering from a king corrupted by Fire's monster father Cansrel, and the throne of the current King Nash is unstable, and the threat of war is looming from all sides. Despite the royal family's obvious distrust of her, Fire's gift would be invaluable, and Fire is not her father. This is the story of Fire's fight to prove herself; to stay true to herself and to do what she feels is right and pay back the innocent prince Cansrel tried so many times to kill. Because underneath her otherworldly beauty, Fire is just as human as everybody else.

I wholeheartedly recommend that anyone and everyone reads this book - whether you're male or female, old or young. Partly because of a blog post I just found. I was going to comment on it, but then it became a bit long so I shall be posting it separately. But whether you'd rather read something fast-paced, or something political, or something romantic, or something magical, READ THIS BOOK.

Finally, I'd like to just direct people to a blog post that Kristin Cashore wrote about Fire and why she wrote it. Also, please find the list of awards and raving reviews for Fire here. :)

TO READ: Graceling

And at last, I've got to recommending what is probably my favourite series of books: The Seven Kingdoms trilogy by the wonderful Kristin Cashore (whose blog is here). Graceling is the first in the trilogy to have been published, and is Cashore's debut novel, although in the story's timeline it is not the first chronologically.

Graceling is set in a fictional Medieval-esque world made up of seven kingdoms: Nander, Estill, Sunder, Wester, Monsea, Lienid, and the Middluns. In this world, some people - called Gracelings - are born with extra-special abilities and are marked by having one eye a different colour to the other.

One such Graceling is Katsa, the niece of the king of the Middluns, who is Graced with killing, and is used by her uncle as a weapon to fuel his fearsome reputation. Sickened by the gruesome tasks she is forced to do, Katsa also works for a secret organisation called the Council, which she started herself, to do good and help people in order to balance out all those she has hurt and killed.

It is on a Council mission to rescue the kidnapped father of the peaceful king of Lienid that Katsa stumbles onto a dark mystery that will lead her on a journey of survival and self-discovery across the Seven Kingdoms in the hopes of putting right a world gone wrong.

Winner of several awards and nominated for many more, Graceling is a gripping and fast-paced coming-of-age novel for young adults, beautifully written with a touch of romance and humour, as well as believable characters who I myself have become incredibly emotionally attached to over at least five readings of this book. It's also due to be adapted for the big screen, by the makers of Life Of Pi; it's a film I'm very much looking forward to, I just hope they do it the justice it deserves.

Also, while browsing Kristin Cashore's blog for the link to the post in which the film was announced, I found this awesome post (if you read it, remember to read some of the comments too, as Cashore comments to answer peoples' questions with more wonderful insights). I swear it's the most inspirational post for writers EVER. Another of my favourites is this one; Kristin Cashore has some of the most brilliant advice for writers, I could actually spend all day finding links to posts from her blog that would be helpful to anyone aspiring to be a novelist (she is seriously inspirational).

A Fan-Girl Moment

I just found out that Kristin Cashore's The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy is going to be made into a film. A film! How exciting! I am very, ahem, pleased. Definitely not overreacting at all. :)

It had better be good.

No, it had better be AMAZING.

Or else.

...

FANFICTION!

I've just posted a one-chapter Bitterblue (Kristin Cashore, of course) fanfiction on (guess what) my FanFiction account, about Bitterblue's wedding... It's called Ghost Eyes. Please take a look! It isn't very long. I think I have anonymous reviews enabled, so anyone can post a comment. Thanks! :)

I've put this at the top of the story, so I don't know why I feel the need to say it again here, but with it being a fanfiction, all the characters in the story belong to Kristin Cashore, the writer of Bitterblue (which I started rereading yesterday, and I really shouldn't have, because on top of tons of homework and revision, I'm also already reading two (possibly three, I lose count) other books, all of which do not belong to me and need to be given back to friends and the school library at some point...)

Anyway, if you've not read Bitterblue or any of The Seven Kingdoms Trilogy, WHY NOT, it's amazing (and most certainly not as well-known as it should be). :)

...

Sigh. Five to seven in the evening and the only productive thing I've managed to do is finally finish editing my Bitterblue fanfiction and blog about it. Great. Not a day wasted at all. :P

I'm way too lazy...

Sleep is my Valentine

I may have a slight hate of Valentine's Day. It's so commercialised. And I don't really see the point. And all the people who are single and don't want to be single have it rubbed in their faces that so many people are happy and in love yet they're still single. Everything everywhere in the run-up to the 14th is all like, "VALENTINE'S DAY!!" and loads of people get all excited over it and then you get to the 14th and then it's like... oh. That's it. That's the day you've been looking forward to/dreading. Gone. And nothing happened. A normal day. Now tell me, WHAT WAS/IS ALL THE FUSS ABOUT????

 I personally would like to ignore it, but unfortunately, it's a little bit hard to ignore.

Also, when I got to school this morning, my friend said to me, "That's a nice jumper, what's it got on it?" and I was like, "A heart." And then I was like, oh shit it's a freaking heart, and it's freaking Valentine's Day. Great planning there, Beth. And I've been slightly annoyed about it all day.  I was a little bit paranoid everyone would notice and be like "Oh that's nice, you're celebrating Valentine's Day by wearing a jumper with a heart on it!" and I would've had to have screamed in their faces, "I'M NOT CELEBRATING VALENTINE'S DAY!" Luckily, I had on a scarf that went in front of the heart, so only the people who I complained about my bad planning to actually noticed. Also, it's a lovely warm jumper, so I wasn't cold aaaaall day. :)

So, Happy Valentine's Day, Happy Beekeeping Day (my friend tells me that Saint Valentine is also, apparently, the patron saint of beekeeping), Happy Pan-Universal Be Who You Are Day and Happy Fourteenth of February! :)

Purely for your own entertainment, here are my [top 10] fictional character Valentines:
1. Brigan from Kristin Cashore's Fire
2. Jacob Reckless from Cornelia Funke's Mirrorworld series (Reckless and Fearless)
3. Sherlock from the BBC series Sherlock 
4. Po from Kristin Cashore's Graceling
5. Sean Kendrick from Maggie Stiefvater's The Scorpio Races
6. Sam Roth from Maggie Stiefvater's Mercy Falls Wolves series
7. Four from Veronica Roth's Divergent and Insurgent
8. Mr Rochester from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre
9. Chaol Westfall from Sarah J Maas' Throne of Glass
10. Magnus Bane from Cassandra Clare's The Infernal Devices and The Mortal Instruments series'

I'm not happy that I couldn't fit the following - who are in no order whatsoever other than the order in which I thought of them - onto my list:

• Jem and Will from Cassie Clare's The Infernal Devices
• Jace from The Mortal Instruments,
• Giddon and Raffin (and, by extension of Raffin, Bann, because they're so cute together!) from Kristin Cashore's Graceling and Bitterblue
• Marco from Erin Morgenstern's The Night Circus
• Dashiell from Dash and Lily's Book of Dares
• Saf from Ms Cashore's Bitterblue (even though I don't like how snide and rude he is to Bitterblue sometimes, and how he does stupid things from time to time)
• John Watson from BBC Sherlock
• Gale from Susanne Collins' The Hunger Games
• Sirius Black, James Potter and Remus Lupin from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (or at least, the versions of them found in fan fictions... particularly one called Giving Up and Changing Mind based on James and Lily - yes, it may be long, but the story is awesome and I love it)

And many others besides. :)

A side-note: I highly recommend every book (and TV series and fan fiction story) that I have mentioned in this post, especially the authors I have labelled. Warning: reading any of these books (or fanfictions) or watching any of these series' may cause you to find your fictional Valentine. And if you read The Mortal Instruments, you will quite literally find a fictional Valentine. (Thank God he's fictional!)

A short continuation of the post I wrote approximately two minutes ago

Furthermore, I have just read the latest post on Kristin Cashore's blog. The captions are brilliant.

http://kristincashore.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/it-is-use-of-increasingly-more.html

Which reminds me, I promised a friend I'd lend her Kristin Cashore's books. We were talking about The Lord Of The Rings, and she said she didn't like fantasy because of all the crazy magic stuff like talking trees. Naturally I was like, "What's wrong with talking trees?!" So I was telling her why I like fantasy, and I told her about Kristin Cashore's awesome books and asked her if she wanted to borrow them off me, she tried to refuse by saying that she prefered romance stories, so I was like, "THERE'S LOADS OF ROMANCE!!!"

Hopefully, Kristin Cashore, you will have another fan. :)

Basically what I'm saying is, read Graceling, Fire and Bitterblue. They are AMAZING and you will see why I keep mentioning them and their author. :)