Graceling by Kristin Cashore

Katsa is graced, although not in a good way. Her special skill is killing people. She's not particularly happy about this, but what can she really do about it? Her uncle uses her services for his own political gains, while she tries to use her unusual abilities to protect those in opposition to her uncle's tyrannical rule. On one of her assignments, she encounters Prince Po who seems to be graced with a fighting ability which equals, or at least challenges her own skills. She knocks him out, hoping that she has seen the last of him (and his lovely eyes), but that is not the case. This book could have been so much less than what it seems in the beginning, although it's a fairly good start, but what it turns into is one of the best books I've read in 2008. It's not so much the plot, or the great characters, or even the fully realized fantasy realm that's created. It's that something other that makes one put a book down, sigh, and say " Wow, that was really really good!"