The first volume in this series, _Graceling_, flew as clear and straight as an arrow but this one is more of a roller coaster: long hard grind to start, sickening baffles in the middle, breathless ride to the finish. It should be noted that this is not at all a standalone novel, so if you didn't love _Graceling_ don't even try -- but there are arguments that you might want to read the author's second novel, the prequel _Fire_, after this one.

The story initially appears to be an example of the classic fantasy trope of the "teen monarch walking his/her own kingdom in disguise". I'm not gonna lie, the author takes her time with it too. All I can say is that nothing turns out to be extraneous, and while you're focusing on young love and episodes of sudden street violence the author is sowing clues rather thickly that will turn out to be relevant to the shatteringly adult revelations and choices in the last hundred pages or so. Potential readers should be aware that the gore and creepiness factors only go up from _Graceling_'s not-particularly-low baseline.

Cashore is subtly amazing at tying each character's physical state to their mental/spiritual issues, so her people spend a lot of time suffering from metaphor-rich ailments including sleep deprivation, peritonitis, concussion, broken bones, black eyes, and acrophobia. You actually start to feel woozy and enervated as you trail young Queen Bitterblue around her exhausting day and night schedules. I especially admired how the orphaned teenage monarch stealthily sought out physical contact from others, especially of the motherly variety that she missed so much.

The slipperiness of memory, both public and private, is not at all a common theme for children's literature and I can only commend Ms Cashore for going there in an ostensibly "teen" novel. This book actually rather shocked me into recalling something I had forgotten a bit, which is the great strength of science fiction and fantasy to "tell all the truth but tell it slant". You don't have to end up admiring the liars, thieves, grumpuses, and abusers in these pages -- although in many cases I did -- but to grasp the novel at all you will have to admit that almost all the characters qualify in at least one of those categories.