Early Review – The Gracekeepers by Kristy Logan (3/5 stars)
Reading Level: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Size: 320 pages
Publisher: Crown
Release Date: May 15, 2015
ISBN-13: 978-0451465962
Stand Alone or Series: Stand Alone
Source: ARC from Amazon Vine
Rating: 3/5 stars
I got a copy of this book to review through the Amazon Vine program. This book had an interesting premise and had some excellent descriptions throughout. That being said I had a really hard time reading this book. It was hard to engage in the story and engage with the characters.
Callanash is a Gracekeeper, she lives on an island alone and helps bury the dead in a watery grave. North is a bear girl and performs with her bear in a traveling circus with other damplings. Damplings are those who live in boats on the water drifting from place to place. Both girls are lonely and an unlikely meeting between the two ends up benefiting them both.
The premise for this story is very interesting. I loved the idea of a future Earth covered in water and the idea of of two classes of humans; landlings (those who live on land) and damplings (those who live in the water). I really enjoyed the idea of a circus that travels on water and of people living that way. I was also fascinated by Callanash, a girl who is not quite human who lives alone on this island and buries the dead.
Additionally I liked the idea of humanity starting to adapt (in an evolutionary way) to its watery environment and wish this had been explored a bit more in the book.
Unfortunately despite the above, I had an incredibly hard time reading this book. The story just switched viewpoint too much and the way it was written made it hard to stay engaged in the story. I kept finding myself getting to the end of the page and not remembering what I had just read; I really really had to concentrate to get through this book.
This was a tough read, the story just didn’t flow as well as it could have and some parts were very slow. This was very disappointing to me since I think the ideas presented here could have made for an amazing story.
Overall I don’t really recommend this book, although the premise was interesting. This is one of those stories that has some amazing ideas and characters; but it is written in such a way that it is very difficult to read. It’s an amazing idea and premise with mediocre writing.
This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– You Read How Many Books? Reading Challenge
