The Gracekeepers - Kirsty Logan

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First things first...
    A round of applause for this cover! It is absolutely stunning!

There aren't words to describe how much I loved this book, if I really tried very hard and went and found a dictionary I might be lucky and strike it. I have wanted to read this book since Jen Campbell recommended it on Twitter and the cover is simply spell bounding, beautiful hardback cover with embossing on the coversheet, the end papers had a map of the world in which Callanish and North lived. Simply stunning. 

     The Gracekeeper Callanish performs shoreside burials for damplings, the word they use for people who live on the water. She lives alone on her little island, tending to the small graces that are used in the rituals of burial. Meanwhile on the other side of the world is North, who works on the circus boat Excalibur, they sail from one island to the next performing at each stop to earn coins, cold and food. 

     The world is divided into two groups, those who life on the mainland (landlockers) and those who sail the seas (damplings), both women experience loneliness, and their worlds collide when a sudden storm offshore brings the two together and both realise there are more than what they understand. 

     Inspired in part by Scottish myths and fairytales, The Gracekeepers tells modern story of an irreparably changed world: one that harbors the same isolation and sadness, but also joys and marvels of our own age. 

This book did not disappoint, Kirsty Logan has a way with words, even the way she described an apple made my mouth water for one. She has a way to play with words, and even though this book was a standalone, she managed to paint this elaborate world where you could imagine the vast open areas of water where Callanish lived in isolation, only seeing people when they brought their dead to be buried at sea, straight through to where North, Red Gold and Ainsel walks through the forests, I could imagine walking in the woods, the mossy smell of the undergrowth, to the tall trees towering over me. 

You immediately realise that although the ocean has flooded most of earth, the people has adapted to their new situation. The two groups of people have different sets of beliefs and didn't mingle with one another, The landlockers sneering at the damplings, the damplings ridiculing the landlockers.