Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Surrounded by enemies, the once-great nation of Ravka has been torn in two by the Shadow Fold, a swath of near impenetrable darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh. Now its fate may rest on the shoulders of one lonely refugee.

Alina Starkov has never been good at anything. But when her regiment is attacked on the Fold and her best friend is brutally injured, Alina reveals a dormant power that saves his life—a power that could be the key to setting her war-ravaged country free. Wrenched from everything she knows, Alina is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling.

Yet nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. With darkness looming and an entire kingdom depending on her untamed power, Alina will have to confront the secrets of the Grisha . . . and the secrets of her heart.

This is such a popular book in the book community, so much so that the Netflix adaptation is going to be released soon! So to say I was dying to read it and finally experience the characters and the world that I have seen so many people raving and talking about is an understatement.

The first thing I noticed was the terminology in the story. As expected for a fantasy like this, there were things unique to the story that were created for this world which means I, as a new reader to the Grishaverse, obviously won't understand. But I think there could have been a better job in explaining the world and terminology right when they're brought up. Because otherwise, it got very confusing with the terms and hierarchies just being casually mentioned with no explanation of what they mean right along with them. They were explained better later which is good and helped me feel more immersed in the story but it could have saved a lot of confusion and own research on the reader's part that took me out of the story. 

However, that being said, the world Bardugo has created was one of my favorite parts of the book. Once you understand it, understand the different groups and what they do, the world is much more understandable. I loved learning about the Grisha, the different orders and the parts of their culture. It was so interesting and it made me want to be part of the world, see the keftas, the magic, in person. The world building was just so good. 

The characters were great too. I loved Alina as our main character, I found her very reasonable given her background and what she's been through and I really liked seeing her grow throughout the book into a stronger person. Actually, I feel like I liked all of our characters. Mal was great both when he was there and when he was just a thought that followed Alina through her journey. In fact, I think I appreciated all the characters and what they brought to the story. All the main characters felt very distinct and it was east to connect enough with the story to have feelings about all of them.

To go along with that, I loved Alina's development. It was easy to understand her feelings of isolation, longing to being wanted, identified, and needed in the world both in being able to relate with her and being able to see why she feels that way given her childhood and past trauma. It was easy to see how her relationships with people around her was affected by this, why she was so drawn to The Darkling or why she wanted to change her feelings for Mal and why, near the end, she was blindsided by the truth of what was going on and how she had been manipulated. It even made her connection with her powers so much more deep than I'd ever read before in a book like this. I loved how much her powers very much personified her independence, individuality and sense of worth. And why her relationships effected her powers and vice versa. It was great to read.

The story was crafted perfectly from the beginning and everything just fit and made so much sense in terms dynamics and relationships. It was what made the story so captivating for me and made me be able to read more than a hundred pages a day without even feeling it.

The writing style was very good, I was immersed in the story almost immediately and I felt like it flowed very well. However, there was a lot of description in the chapters which at times got to the point where it was boring and it lost my attention to the point where I had to put the book down and stop reading. It felt like pretty slow paced with a large chunk of the book being repetitive and nothing really happening. 

But in other moments, I was so sucked into the world and the characters that I had literal fangirling sessions. Mostly due to The Darkling whose initial characterization is usually exactly what I love and look for in male characters. I loved the scenes where his signature color was heavily emphasized and Alina was in connection to it as well, the symbol she eventually wore. With this, however, does stem a part of the book that was its biggest downfall in my eyes and the reason I can't give this book a 5 star but it is a spoiler so I'll talk about it more below. 

I think this was a great start to a series and a great introduction to the world and characters that was so interestingly and intricately done. I also found themes of classism such interesting elements added that really made me more curious about the world. Especially with the constant thought of Ravka being not only behind technology wise and relying on traditional beliefs but also having large wealth disparities. While at the end, I did leave it feeling disappointed, I think the beautiful way Bardugo showed us Alina's feelings and how they influenced her connections with others and her powers was so powerful and made the story what it was. 

SPOILER

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The thing that left me disappointed the most was what ended up happening to The Darkling's characterization. Which is interesting to me because of all the reviews I've read of this book, no one mentions feeling the same way about it as I do. But as I said, the Darkling's initial characterization was amazing for me. I love morally grey characters (even better: morally grey villains) that may be evil but do so with good, or at least in their mind, good intentions. And the Darkling has those, it was established and run with for a large portion of the book. Which was great and exciting for me to find a character like that. And I did love him a lot, I anticipated all of his scenes. But I feel like all that character development, all the complexity he had was just forgotten, destroyed in the last few chapters. He became just evil and two dimensional. His motivations were just barely touched on as existing and I just couldn't help but be disappointed in the way he ended up being portrayed. I get he's evil and he can be shown in that light whilst simultaneously not losing what he has been hinting and building on throughout the entire novel - the motivation, whether its good or not. It's fine for him to just be evil but I feel like Bardugo tried to push that so much and to do that she did make him much more of a static character than he was for the rest of the novel. And that, for me, ruined what could've been a much more interesting character, storyline and plot and left me feeling very disappointed at the end. 

But another thing I did love about the story was the dynamic between her power and her independence. The way her dependence on Mal was the thing that held her back all her life and due to that, she felt lost. This led her to want to please the Darkling and love to be in his favor because she felt wanted and he made her feel like she belonged. But later, he was the one who took away her freedom of her power and took her away from everything she had built herself to be. I think it's incredible that Bardugo managed to build that intricate level of connections and it was honestly such a powerful thing to read about and see unfold.