Book Review: The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
A review copy of this book was provided to me by the publisher via Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.
The Gracekeepers by Kirsty Logan
Genre: Fantasy
Series: Stand Alone
Publisher: Crown (May 19, 2015)
Author Information: Website | Twitter
Mogsy’s Rating: 3.5 of 5 stars
I went into The Gracekeepers very carefully. From what I’d heard, it sounded a lot like the kind of literary magical realism which would require an active engagement of the reader’s imagination in order to fill in the gaps, and books like this with their haunting, dreamlike style can either be a huge hit with me or it can fall flat. After completing novel, I think my feelings hover somewhere in between. Overall I enjoyed the story, but also felt there was a lot that kept me from connecting with it fully.
To start, The Gracekeepers takes place in a world where the ocean has flooded most of the earth, so its people have learned to adapt. Those who have taken to the sea and made their permanent homes aboard ships and other vessels are referred to as damplings, while those who have remained on land are known as landlockers. A class disparity exists between these two groups, with damplings regarded as second-class citizens and often looked upon with condescension and suspicion by the more well-to-do landlockers.
The story focuses predominantly on two characters, North and Callanish. North is a young woman who performs with her trained bear companion as part of her act with the traveling circus ship Excalibur. The circus’s captain and ringmaster Jarrow “Red Gold” Stirling has dreams for his son and North to marry and settle on land in a house he’s spent his whole life saving up for, to the displeasure of Avalon, Jarrow’s pregnant wife who wants that house for herself. Meanwhile in another place, Callanish lives a solitary life while dutifully performing her role as a gracekeeper, an undertaker of sorts who lays the dead to rest at the bottom of the ocean. Callanish and North meet in the wake of a great storm after the crew of the Excalibur is forced to make their way to the gracekeeper to seek her services, and the two are drawn to each other immediately.
Kirsty Logan has created something very interesting here, as far as her world and characters go. The writing style evokes an image of a gauzy shroud enveloping everything in the story with a light aura of enchantment, even though there is little to no magic involved. As I had expected, a bit of imagination is required to find your way through the mist, because even though the world is fascinating, world-building itself is decidedly lacking. There’s a positive side to this if you like getting just enough to inspire the mind, especially if you enjoy a little ambiguity and speculation. For instance, could the waterworld of The Gracekeepers be our own in some distant future, or someplace else entirely? What caused the divide between damplings and landlockers? How did the rituals of gracekeeping first come about and what’s the significance behind the use of graces, small birds that are starved to death in order to mark the end of the mourning period? There are many things that don’t get explained, but perhaps they don’t need to be – similar to the way we’re content to accept folk or fairy tales as they are, because there is simply no need to question them critically. And certain aspects of the narrative – like Callendish’s backstory – are better off being vague because we already have all the information we need to know.
However, while there are the bigger and more general mysteries that I can abide going unsolved, I still felt there were some specific details lacking that hurt the overall cohesiveness of the story. There are two factions – the military and the revivalists – that are important to the plot of The Gracekeepers, but they felt like such a poor fit with the rest of the book because the parts they played were slapdash and written in so randomly. Individuals like North and Callendish are characterized very well, but when it comes to actual character relationships, the story loses some of its magic. I wasn’t even that convinced of the bond between North and her bear, her best friend and companion since childhood who apparently wasn’t even given a name. There are more examples which I can’t go into for fear of spoilers, but with regards to the writing style, it’s probably safe to say that the emphasis is on atmosphere – which, to the author’s credit, she creates very well – but there just isn’t enough substance for me. I would have preferred more reasons to engage with the story and to see everything tie together more neatly.
Still, I would happily recommend The Gracekeepers, even if it does come with a couple caveats. It’s quite an ambitious novel, very well-written considering how the author no doubt achieved the haunting, dreamy effect she was going for. Not as solid as I’d hoped, but the story is nonetheless fascinating and beautiful, walking that fine line between melancholy and optimism, and I found the characters genuinely interesting.
The BiblioSanctum 
I have to agree with you about some of the world building and characterization. I was so confused by how exactly the graces worked with the whole process of gracekeeping. I think I ended up coming to my own conclusion, because she never really explains it. But I guess it didn’t bother me that much, because I did love this book. The dreamy atmosphere worked for me, and I was pretty forgiving when it came to gaps in the plot like that.
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Yeah, for someone who is more used to the robust world building of epic fantasies, I felt The Gracekeeper was a bit light on that. That’s the kind of book it was meant to be though, so I can’t fault it too much for leaving so much in the air, though I could have done with more details on factions and places that were important to the plot.
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To me this sounds wonderful, I’d love to try it
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I’d be interested to hear what you think if you do pick it up, it’s been recommended for fans of books like The Night Circus or Station Eleven.
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Oh no! I could not finish the Night circus
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Yeah I wasn’t crazy about that book either, like I said, these kinds of “magical realism”/mystical atmosphere books can be hit or miss with me.
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This is intriguing enough to warrant a try: on one side I like the idea of just enough background to allow you to connect the dots on your own (spoon-feeding is usually a big turn-down for me), on the other there seems to be some gaps in that background that were left much too open… Well, only time will tell! 🙂
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The bulk of it is meant to be filled in by the reader’s imagination, I’m sure. Which is fine, though I think it’s a fine line to balance to not make readers feel like they’ve stumbled in the middle of something without direction, which was admittedly how I felt here and there.
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It’s the first time I hear about this one but it sounds really interesting. I’m so in love with the cover now. I’m glad you had a good time in a whole. I’m curious about everything.
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I have to say I adore the cover too! It probably wouldn’t have caught my eye if it was just the description, but the cover image drew me in.
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This is an interesting one – I was really enjoying the sound of it from your review – up to a point. I quite like the idea of something being very atmospheric and also I don’t mind having to come up with my own ideas about what’s going on as sometimes too much explanation is just a pain. But then certain things put me off – and I admit that starving little birds to death as part of a ritual didn’t appeal to me!! I think sometimes the idea of not giving too much away in a story adds to the mysticism but sometimes it comes across as though it’s maybe not really been properly thought out by the author. I think it would irritate me maybe to not have at least some context – like why the people on land/sea have such enmity towards each other.
Good review – I think I may sit on the fence with this one – your review kind of put me in mind of how I felt when reading Among Others – it just didn’t work out for me although lots of people loved it.
Lynn 😀
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Yeah, those poor little graces! It’s like, if you’re going to have such a cruel and inhumane ritual in the story, I’d like to at least know how such a practice came about this way.
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Hmmmmm. It still sounds interesting, but I’m not so sure now how I’d like this book. As much as an atmosphere-driven story sounds lovely, the substance needs to be there, too. And if it’s lacking in substance… Well, I won’t go out of my way to read The Gracekeepers, but if I see while browsing through a bookstore, maybe I’ll check it out.
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Well, some people loved it, so to a certain point, I think it’s one of those, “It’s not the book, it’s me” things. I do love atmosphere and a bit of mystery, of having to use my imagination to visualize or come up with backstory, but that mostly works for things that are more general, typically elements in world building that factor into the setting. I still prefer more detail especially when it comes to elements that are pertinent to the actual story development.
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