Grab The Gracekeepers Author Kirsty Logan Viewable As Hardcover
es una gracekeeper, vive aislada del resto del mundo, como una sacerdotisa antigua abandonada a sus rituales y pensamientos, . . pero un día conoce a North, una joven que pertenece a un circo ambulante, y sus vidas quedarán entretejidas para siempre,
Es una pena que no haya terminado de amar este libro, pero me han fallado muchas cosas,
Aún así, es una lectura agradable, he disfrutado mucho del estilo intimista y poético de la autora, de ese mundo que construye tan particular fan de la idea del mundo acuático semi postapocalíptico con esas clases sociales tan marcadas y que deja tanto a la imaginación.
. . pero según avanzaba la novela se me iba cayendo poquito a poco,
Ni los personajes ni la trama lograron atraparme y me da la impresión de que a los primeros les falta personalidad y pecan de estereotipados.
La trama va a la deriva sin llevarte a ninguna parte y finalmente el desenlace me pareció, . . poco consecuente. Especialmente el tema del oso,
Sea como sea, es una novela que creo que tiene grandes ideas pero que falla en su desarrollo y desenlace, No me disgustó pero da pena porque tenía todos los elementos para resultar mucho más interesante,
La edición del libro, eso sí, es una absoluta preciosidad,
No está traducido al castellano que yo sepa, out of
I loved this so much I dont even know how to briefly explain, . .
to come, “We're all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding, ”
Rudyard Kipling
Kirsty Logan, a British author, pens her new novel, The Gracekeepers which is about two individuals living, on the realm by the edge of the sea, with a hope that someday they would be able to put their feet on the mainland.
Synopsis:
As a Gracekeeper, Callanish administers shoreside burials, sending the dead to their final resting place deep in the depths of the ocean.
Alone on her island, she has exiled herself to a life of tending watery graves as penance for a longago mistake that still haunts her.
Meanwhile, North works as a circus performer with the Excalibur, a floating troupe of acrobats, clowns, dancers, and trainers who sail from one archipelago to the next, entertaining in exchange for sustenance.
In a world divided between those inhabiting the mainland "landlockers" and those who float on the sea "damplings", loneliness has become a way of life for North and Callanish, until a sudden storm offshore brings change to both their livesoffering them a new understanding of the world they live in and the consequences of the past, while restoring hope in an unexpected future.
Inspired in part by Scottish myths and fairytales, The Gracekeepers tells a modern story of an irreparably changed world: one that harbors the same isolation and sadness, but also joys and marvels of our own age.
Logan has divided her imaginative, highlyalluring yet dangerous world into two parts landlockers and damplings, Now landlockers were those who had a classy upbringing and whose ancestors had inhabited the solid and steady ground under their feet and are meant to be forever privileged where religious dogma prevailed in every fiber of each humanbeing living on the mainland.
Not only that, they had the power to everything or rather say, control over every commodity,
Damplings are those who lead a nomadic life on the sea, and who never had a privileged lifestyle and are forced to live either by the edge of the sea or on a boat braving the storm and hard weather conditions every single day of their lives.
Callanish is a gracekeeper who is in charge of putting the souls of those are dead on the sea damplings to rest, She lives in isolation on a lone island mainly because of a past mistake that still haunts her to this day, Her graces are her only companion in her isolation, birds in cages whose life span are linked to the duration of the mourning period,
North is another dampling who works as a bear girl in the Excalibur circus and circus is her only family, The redfaced ring master Jarrow, the leader of the circus, He made it sure that North gets married to his only son, whereas Jarrow's new wife is a vile character, who would not stop at anything in ruining her son's marriage with North.
On the other hand, North leads a painful life keeping the islanders entertained with their extravagant and marvelous shows,
And when North and Callanish paths cross, they are not only drawn towards each other but are also left parted by some events while they are both trying to put their feet on the mainland by making their own lives.
The author's initial world building is really rich and deep with details and layered with proper reasons, This novel is a work of perfection with flawless writing style that captivates one's mind almost immediately, The shifting narrative style that lets us see through the minds of various characters is kept evocative and freeflowing, The lyrical pace is steady since it takes time to swim deep into the depths of this story,
The characters from the circus have an air of engaging, unique and impressive demeanor, The pain is not reflected through their voices instead they masked them with their jubilant acts that they performed, Moreover, the author have strikingly painted the picture of the circus which let me see and believe like it's happening right in front of my eyes.
The emotions of these characters are very well portrayed and the author have kept them closer to the reality,
The whole story has a fairytale kind of feel which is not only enticing enough to keep us glued to the story, but is also an emotional journey of those who live a difficult life.
The author have mixed science fiction with mythology, thus resulting into The Gracekeepers which is an exquisite novel that is sure to keep you drawn into it till the very end.
This is a mustread novel for everyone, since this author is a master storyteller, and being her debut novel, she crafted it like a pro with delicacy and compassion.
Verdict: Grab a copy of the book now to lose yourself into Logan's charming watery world,
Courtesy: Thanks to the author's publisher for giving me an opportunity to read and review this book, It was not okay it gets two because it was readable in a messy soap opera kind of way,
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Okay, full review:
I don't think I've ever read such a mess of a story, And I've read some convoluted messes,
So why does the Gracekeepers gets the first place in "Most Convoluted Story" award
Well, . . imagine a vaguely distopyan setting in which the Planet has suffered the full consequences of global warming: The level of water has risen, leaving most of Earth well, I'm guessing here.
. . maybe it's some alien planet instead fully submerged,
The world is divided between landlockers people who own land and damplings people who live on the sea, and this is where the concept starts falling apart due to its simplicity.
We are told that food is scarce, . . okay, that makes sense since there's less arable land available, but then we read that the people who live on land don't want anything "to do" with fish.
. .
You're hungry, there's food available, but "hey" I am going to be picky about it, . . because water is dirty, and people who live in the water are dirty, This is the explanation that is given, Less due to pollution and more due to superstitions,
Regarding Water the oceans have risen, so what has happened to potable water sources
Because, logically, in this setting that would mean almost no potable water.
Strangely that is never mentioned,
Of course when you think that about half is it half What is the percentage We are never told of the population that lives on boats, one has to wonder about the quality of the thing.
I have to mention that the boat Excalibur, with the exception of soldier ships, never ever crosses path with other ships, No boat's jammings, ever. Amazing.
Segregation
If you don't hold land, you're seen as less, That is what North is, She is a dampling and she lives and works on an circus,
Enters the Night Circus environment, . . not. This doesn't have anything to do with that book, Most especially it doesn't have anything to do with the images that Erin Morgenstern created,
LGBT romance
Well, in fact there isn't an actual romance between our Gracekeeper and North, the girl that lives in the circus.
More like, they're instantly smitten when they do met there's hand holding and secrets sharing, because otherwise it would just take too bloody long, but they'll eventually meet again in the end of the book because in the meantime we'll have to be bored out of our minds by pov's of almost every single character in the book.
But what is a Gracekeeper, you ask
Well, a grace keeper is someone who takes care of the graces,
And here, graces are birds,
Basically
the girl, woman we have no idea of her age, or for how long she has been a Gracekeeper! kills a lot of birds, when she places then in cages, like tombstones to mark where has placed some dead person to rest.
And now as I think about it, I am left wondering how the cages are kept above water, Are there poles Do they have little inflatable vests
Technicalities: they are a bitch,
Because you know, reusable cages and all that, so the birds die of the elements and starvation, Oh, and there was this little bit of information as if the birds were engineered to last a certain amount of time the time period for mourning of that person, but later on there's nothing else to clarify what type of society these people live in.
Stone age meets Xman
As for our Grace Keeper, Callanish there's another one, but he's a drunk, and he only appears for a few pages, so who cares about the guy, well, when the story starts, I was left with the impression that she had committed some crime, and that was her punishment: being a Mortician for dampling people.
But later on, we are told that she choose that life, So, I guess anyone can volunteer
not Katniss, Katniss would never be such an idiot,
Talking about Morticians and other technicalities, . . I guess Callanish has a lot of strength to dump a lot of dead bodies in the ocean, right Oh, and then there's the fact that THAT is done in the most shallow part of the ocean.
. . because IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO FG LOGIC!
Characters
Well, there's Callanish the gracekeeper, with the mysterious past,
North a girl who lives on the circus Excalibur with her bear, with whom she performs, The bear doesn't have a name, He's her best friend, but apparently it never crossed North's mind to give him a name, Here I was left thinking about Lyra from Pullman's trilogy and the relationship she had with her soul animal
There's the ringmaster aka Arthur, the owner of the circus, who is married to Avalon a crazy bitch determined to incarnate all the crazy bitches from the Arthurian Legends his second wife, and there's also a son Yeah, I don't care about his name from a previous relationship.
The son, who is a boring as soaked bread, has a bit of Mordred in him, so you know what this means, . .
As for the other characters, like the clowns, they are mostly used by the author to briefly approach the issue of gender bending, And I say briefly, because the way it was dealt poorly, reminded me those last episodes of Sailor Moon when some characters appear leaving us wondering if they were guys or women.
What else
Oh, there's women being impregnated by something with scales, but that's okay, because we "should" see that as a form of integration.
How to live both on land and on the sea
Well, that's easy: just go lie by some shore, and some dude/scaly thing will appear and "you'll" be ecstatic! See Who cares about consent
Of course there's still some bit of xenophoby lying around, so lets say that babies born with ebbed toes and hands are usually killed on sight.
As for the plot
Well, as you can see there isn't one, People meet and then we get their pov's about relationships or other stuff,
The part that takes place in the circus setting, feels like a never ending soap opera,
Avalon hates North because she's a jealous nuts, and that's it,
Then there's crazy religious people, Both on land as on the sea because EQUALITY,
Sex traded as a bargain coin, Because, why not
And people having their life dream destroyed because "he" wouldn't be Arthur if that didn't happen in the end,
Oh and they
Ye Gods, I have an headache,
Oh, and this gets two starts because although hating it, I had to keep reading just so I could find out what other absurdity was going to show up next!
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stars
I really wanted to love The Gracekeepers more than I did, but something that usually works for me in a book I thought didnt work so well with this one and my reading experience was hampered a bit
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The story is told from different perspectives: at the beginning it seemed like it was going to be the two main female characters, makes sense, I hugely enjoyed both of their chapters all the way through! But then more perspectives start creeping in, at first I thought okay, cool, these characters are also interesting, I like seeing the story for different angles.
But then they kept on coming! To the point where a new perspective was added in the secondtolast chapter when I was hoping for more Callanish and North! I dont care about you, random character! I think its difficult to really nail for thancharacters voices, and theres at leastin this book, ones you see for only one chapter and it made the book seem disjointed.
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Wow okay, I didnt mean to write that much there! Its made me sound like I didnt enjoy it much at all WHICH IS NOT THE CASE! The writing is stunning, Logan creates such a dreamy atmosphere, and the relationships she pens are both realistic and fantastical.
Obviously my favourites were North and Callanish, but I also loved North and her bear, and the twisted relationships between Avalon and, . . everyone, pretty much.
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The concept was also fascinating, its set in a future where most of the land has been overrun by sea and there is a strange animosity between landlockers and damplings, landdwellers and boatdwellers.
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So I think overall I did enjoy it, but I would have enjoyed it a whole lot more if I didnt get this confused amp disjointed feeling because of too many viewpoints!
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