supercheesegirl

I really enjoyed this quick fantasy read. However, reading the prologue/first chapter of Cashore's second book - basically the beginning of King Leck's origin story - at the back of this book upset me really deeply and kind of ruined it for me. The first thing that upset me was, I admit, Cashore's writing - she writes Larch's story very effectively and, as the mother of a young child myself, it really bothered me that Larch could pour love into this child and not have it returned. But, see, it doesn't make sense. I don't believe a child who was loved as Leck was loved would have turned out the way he did (as a mother of a young child, I CAN'T believe that). I think Cashore wrote it this way partly from a plot perspective (how is she going to get that baby away from a king's court in the seven kingdoms, over the mountains to another land) and partly to set Leck up as an absolute evil villain with no redeeming qualities. But I think what would have been more plausible and much more compelling from a story perspective is a more nuanced villain we could sympathize with. She could've given him loving parents who flee over the mountains while he's still small, before his Grace emerges, and then orphaned him; what I would've preferred about that scenario is seeing how the loss of his family and the negative experiences of his youth turned him into a sociopath. Actually seeing him fall into madness would have been a lot more compelling, to me, than what she did; I think she took the cheap way out, and reading it at the end of Graceling kind of ruined Graceling for me. Despite the fact that I really enjoyed the first book, I don't know if I'll go on to read more in this series, first because for personal reasons I don't want to read more about a child who does the things that the child Leck does; more importantly, I don't know that I want to spend time in a series with such a one-dimensional villain, especially since it's clear he remains the villain even into the third book.