Graceling

This is one of those fantasy novels where women are fully empowered to make their own choices about sexuality and marriage and motherhood, but the one flaw in the narrative concerning sexuality is that it's presented as an undisputed truth that for the recipient, first PIV will always involve pain and that bleeding is normal. This was the received wisdom for my parents' generation, but pain and bleeding are neither inevitable nor unavoidable. In a culture that doesn't value women's pleasure as much as men's, of course it would be the most common experience, since the recipient's partner is would be likely to ensure that the recipient is physiologically ready to receive their partner. In the society of this book, women are taught that their own pleasure is important, so it's very odd for characters to be discussing “Why does it always hurt the first time, for the woman?”

Fantasy authors have a responsibility to correct this myth so that readers do not believe that bleeding (which is an injury) and pain during PIV are ever inevitable or normal. It's only “normal” in a context where the receiver's partner is not attentive to the receiver's body being physiologically ready or the receiver has a medical condition that causes muscle spasms or dryness.

In the scene where Katsa experiences PIV for the first time, it is at a time when she and Po have been doing other activities for a while with increasing intensity. Discomfort from a new sensation would make sense, but it doesn't make sense for there to have been actually pain for her unless she had a medical condition or was dehydrated, or if she was automatically clenching her muscles in expectation of pain instead of relaxing them (a possibility if you're taught that pain is inevitable, but Po might have felt pain from it too or been completely unable to do PIV, and asked her to relax), or Po was inadvertently being too rough. But it would have been much better for the scene to involve Katsa telepathically communicating “you're hurting me” and Po to apologize and slow down in response, to show readers that pain can be lessened or eliminated by slowing down and relaxing, and to leave readers feeling empowered to tell partners if they're having pain.

Fantasy authors: please do better!