Bitterblue by Kristin Cashore

Bitterblue is a young queen of a nation called Monsea. Prior to her queenship Monsea was ruled by Bitterblue's father, an evil man known as King Leck. In this world of seven kingdoms, of which Monsea is one, some people are born with a grace. A grace is like a special gift or superpower. For instance, there is a character whose grace is the ability to look at a person and know exactly what the person needs to eat at that moment. Some characters are graced with the ability of knowing how to heal. One character, a librarian no less, is graced with the ability to remember everything he reads.

King Leck had a particularly insidious grace. He could speak and people automatically believed what he said and did whatever he told them to do. Leck was also a sadist. He used his power to control minds to not only rule over a kingdom, but to hurt his people. He did things like cut people with knives and then make the healers cure them so he could cut the people again. Leck kidnapped (especially young girls and women) and murdered people. Leck left people with injured bodies and minds that can't quite remember what is real and what isn't, what is a true memory and what is a lie. He left them with guilt over what they had been forced to do and not being able to resists his power. If this also sounds very violent for a book aimed at young adults, well it is. There isn't much violence that happens in the action of the story, but what happened in the past is constantly referenced.

Bitterblue is the third book in a set. The first two books in order of publication were Graceling and Fire. Fire is a companion to Graceling and Bitterblue is the sequal to Graceling. At the end of Graceling King Leck was killed and a 10-year-old Bitterblue became the queen. Now 18, Queen Bitterblue must figure out how to rule her very broken, very hurt kingdom.

The big problem, or set of problems, concerns how to deal with the past. Her advisors have urged a policy of simply moving forward. They want to give blanket pardons to anyone who committed crimes under Leck's rule since most of those crimes were committed while under Leck's mind control. The problem is that many people want to remember. They want to know what happened to their friends and families who disappeared under Leck's rule. They want what was stolen from them to be returned. They want to be whole again and for some that requires knowing and speaking the truth.

I love it when a book makes me think hard about something else entirely. Early on in Bitterblue I found myself thinking of truth and reconciliation commissions in South Africa. Atrocities were committed and there needed to be a way where victims and victimizers (sometimes the same people in Bitterblue) needed to be able to speak the truth. Bitterblue is stuck for much of the book because she doesn't know enough about the past to help people in the present, but eventually she finds a way forward.

It is funny how books end up in one's life sometimes. A friend gave me Graceling to read because we both love romances and Graceling has a beautiful romance in between the fights for survival. That led me to this book that made be think of history and politics. What a reading world! This is why I love books.