Shadow And Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Published by Square Fish
Age Group: Young Adult
Format: Fiction
Genres and Categories: Disabled and Neurodivergent Authors, Magic Users, Action, Adventure, Epic Fantasy, Elemental Magic, Light Magic, Various Magic, Magic School
Series: Shadow and Bone #1, Grishaverse #1
My Rating:
Published on: 7th May 2013
Pages: 358
Buy this Book! Amazon UK / Amazon US / Barnes & Noble / Blackwells / Bookshop.org US / Bookshop.org UK / Waterstones
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Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold--a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.

Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country's magical military elite--and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift.

As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation.

Welcome to Ravka . . . a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems.

Content Warnings:

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Shadow And Bone Book Review

The Shadow and Bone series has been on my TBR for quite a while and I’ll be totally honest, finding out that Ben Barnes was in the Netflix adaptation prompted me to finally read it. I’m a big fan of his and when I started hearing great things about his role in the show I wanted to watch it even more. Before I start talking about my thoughts on the book itself I want to mention that, if like me, you wanted to read the book before watching the show, you actually need to read two books.

There are multiple book trilogies and duologies that are set in “Grishaverse” and for the TV show, they’ve mixed things up a bit. They’ve used the chronological events of the Shadow and Bone trilogy but also added in the characters from the Six of Crows duology. The Six of Crows duology takes place after the Shadow and Bone trilogy, and while it alludes to events that happened it doesn’t give you massive spoilers. However, the TV show does give you spoilers for two of the main characters in Six of Crows because events that happened before the novel are shown in the TV show.

Yes, that is all very confusing (especially as the first book of each series has the same name as the series). In short; I personally advise reading the first book of both series before starting the TV Show if you want to avoid spoilers.

Now, onto my review of Shadow and Bone.

I enjoyed the book, and I was quite happy when I finished it. Yet, as you can see, I’ve only given it 3 stars. I considered giving it 3.5 but the more I thought about it, the more I realised that it really didn’t even deserve that half a star. So what went wrong for me? Considering this book is so beloved by so many people? Well, to put it very bluntly the story is so incredibly BASIC. It has its charms, yet, at the end of the day, it really is such a fundamental fairytale plot. There was one plot twist and honestly, it was about as unsurprising as finding out that if you step outside during a rainstorm you are going to get wet. I kept waiting for something, anything, to jump out and bite me, to surprise me and at about 82% I was like… is this it?

I think I can see why people are so fond of the book and it’s all to do with the protagonist, Alina. Unlike other protagonists, she’s extremely likeable. She’s a plain Jane, and I think people probably relate to that. She could be anyone, she is anyone, just a random girl that something extraordinary happens to her. She’s swept away into this world of magic just like so many of us are swept away by things in life. The problem for me is that I like my protagonists to have a bit more of a spark. While she’s someone who puts their head down and works, when push comes to shove she doesn’t stick her head up and say “screw you, I’m not going down without a fight”. She relies too much on what other people tell her to do, on their guidance.

I normally don’t include spoilers in my reviews, however, I feel that the romance in this book is something I need to talk about.

I originally considered continuing the Shadow and Bone and Grishaverse series but eventually recognised that they were not for me.

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