Kristin Cashore, author of fantasy books Fire and Graceling, will be visiting Paly during seventh period in the SSRC and will hold a book club event at 7 p.m. today, Wednesday, Oct. 7 in the Town & Country Books Inc. store.
Cashore is traveling across the nation promoting the release of her new novel, Fire, released October 2009.
Fire is the prequel to Cashore’s debut novel, Graceling.
“Seventeen-year-old Fire is the last remaining human-shaped monster in the Dells,” Cashore wrote about Fire on her blog. “Gorgeously monstrous in body and mind but with a human appreciation of right and wrong, she is hated and mistrusted by just about everyone, and this book is her story.”
Fire takes place 30 years before Graceling and a character featured in both stores ties the two novels together, according to Cashore’s blog.
Although book events are held once or twice a week, Books Inc. holds the “Not Your Mother’s Book Club,” a book club focused on young adult books, once a month, according to Eric Petersen, manager of Books Inc. at Town & Country.
For these book visitations, publishers put out a list of authors on tour to which stores, such as Books Inc., send out requests, according Petersen. The book touring process does not always guarantee that the requests will be fulfilled, but this time around, Books Inc. was lucky.
“We really liked her book [Graceling],” Petersen said. “The pacing and story of the book was special. I liked the story because it was different.”
Other employees showed enthusiasm about both of Cashore’s novels.
“They are really well written, both of them,” said Lori Haggbloom, buyer employee of Books Inc. “There’s adventure, fantasy, and romance, but the focus isn’t on the romance. There’s strong female characters without degrading the men. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy.”
Graceling won the 2009 Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature and the SIBA Book Award for YA Literature, and has been recognized as the Publishers’ Weekly and School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.
In progress is another novel, Bitterblue, which is a companion book to both Fire and Graceling, and features overlapping characters, but the release date is still to be decided, according to Cashore’s blog.
Editor’s note: The original story incorrectly stated that Oct. 7 was a Friday. It is in fact a Wednesday. The current version of the story reflects the change.