It’s difficult to describe
Kirsty Logan’s The Gracekeepers, and
to be honest, I’m not even entirely sure what I just finished reading last
night. Treating its elements of fantasy
as totally normal while giving the reader a strange sense of foreboding, The Gracekeepers attempts to cross
genres, but not all that successfully.
North and her beloved bear
are part of a traveling circus, and the circus itself is made up of
“damplings,” people who stay on the water. These damplings go from island to
island to entertain the “landlockers,” and the relationships of the circus
performers are really what make this novel interesting. Logan is not as successful in telling
Callanish’s story; Callanish is a hybrid per se, who lives on the land, but
goes out into the water to do “restings” (water burials). Her chapters seemed to
weigh this book down.
Unfortunately, at no time
did I really feel invested in The
Gracekeepers. It was difficult to
understand exactly what was going on at any given moment, especially when the
“gracekeepers” themselves came into the story.
If reading a book feels more like work than it should, I have to give it
a lower-than-average rating.
MY RATING - 2
