![\"Grave](\"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/06\/Grave-Mercy.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I recently listened to the audiobook of Grave Mercy<\/em>, and I kept thinking of Katsa, from Graceling<\/em>.\u00a0 After all, she was also an assassin with mystical powers who was being used as a pawn in someone else\u2019s plans. \u00a0I think these young women would find great comfort in each other\u2019s company, and I can almost imagine them meeting up for tea or a glass of wine and to kvetch about the people they had to kill that week!\u00a0 (To learn more about Katsa\u2019s story, check out my Graceling<\/em> review<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The really cool thing about Ismae is that she was fathered by Death \u2014 aka Saint Mortain. This was first discovered when she resisted the herbs her mother bought in an attempt to expel her from the womb. The turnip farmer who raised her as his child despised her and treated her terribly, then he sold her off as a bride to a brutish man when she was seventeen.\u00a0 On her wedding night, when her husband discovered the marks that had been left behind by the poison, he flew into a rage.\u00a0 Ismae managed to escape and was taken away to live in a convent with the Sisters of Mortain, who trained her to be handmaiden of Death. \u00a0Ismae was trained to mix and administer a variety of poisons, to conceal and use all manner of weapons, and to use \u201cwomanly arts\u201d to search potential targets for the mark of Mortain [which both confirmed that a person should be assassinated and also indicated how they would die]. Add in some double-agents, hidden plots, and a dash of romance, and you get an audiobook that made me sad to run into only light traffic on the way home!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I recently listened to the audiobook of Grave Mercy, and I kept thinking of Katsa, from Graceling.\u00a0 After all, she was also an assassin with mystical powers who was being used as a pawn in someone else\u2019s plans. \u00a0I think these young women would find great comfort in each other\u2019s company, and I can almost … Continue reading Grave Mercy: His Fair Assassin Book One by Robin LaFevers<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,6,8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-all-posts","category-books-for-young-adults","category-fiction","category-reviewed-by-chrissie"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/staffpicks.eglibrary.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}