by Kristin Cashore
First sentence: “In these dungeons the darkness was complete, but Katsa had a map in her mind.”
Support your local independent bookstore: buy it there!
Content: There’s some tasteful sex, a lot of violence, and you need to be somewhat more mature to understand what Leck is capable of in order for it to have its full impact. It’s in the Teen section (grades 9+) of the bookstore, but I wouldn’t hesitate to give it to an 8th grader who was interested.

For June’s YAcker book, we picked Bitterblue, but one thing led to another, and we ended up making a summer project of reading Cashore’s trilogy. I’m not one for re-reading books, but since I hadn’t picked this one up in 5 years, I thought, in order to be an intelligent participant, I needed to reread it.

And, oh, it was just as wonderful as it was the first time.

I don’t have much more to say (the above link takes you to my initial review) that won’t be said when the YAckers post our discussion. But let me say this: I love Kasta. Her fierceness, her depth of emotion, her contrariness. And I love her with Po. I love their team, I love their relationship. I love how Cashore describes them together.

And I love Bitterblue. I’d forgotten that, not having reread this when Bitterblue came out. But, she’s so small and so fierce, and I love her.