I do not think I’m the only person who’s slowly and surely fallen a bit in love with Hava over the last few novels in Kristin Cashore’s Graceling Realm series. The spy (and secret half-sister of Queen Bitterblue) moved around the edges in Bitterblue, making the most of her Grace (an unlikely and unique power) of hiding and disguise. In last year’s Winterkeep, her role in Bitterblue’s court became rather more prominent—not a position with which Hava was comfortable. 

She takes center stage on her own terms in Seasparrow, which picks up after the explosive end of Winterkeep. The whole world is facing something entirely new: the existence of a weapon far beyond anything previously in existence. Hava’s task is to translate documentation of the weapon’s development. Bitterblue’s is to decide what to do with that information.

But readers of any of the first four Graceling Realms novels will know what they’re really in for. This is a Kristin Cashore novel. There is a plot—a taut and harrowing story—but we are here for a different kind of journey: that of a young woman learning some difficult and necessary truths.

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