About the Book:
Title: Shadow and Bone
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Release Date: June 5, 2012
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 368
My Rating: 4/5 ⭐️
Summary:
Soldier. Summoner. Saint. 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.
My Thoughts:
When I first tried to start this book, it took me a while bit to get into it. That might have been because I was preoccupied with other things going on, but when I finally had some time, I was able to dive right in to the story. The storyline of the book was very interesting, I liked how the book had a mix of some the real world 19th Century Russia in addition to magic. I found the Russian myth in the story interesting, it was different than other myths that are normally included in fantasy stories so it was an enjoyable change. The world building in the story was phenomenal, I loved the amount of detail in the story, it was so easy to visualize places like The Little Palace, the Shadow Fold, and more. One thing that I think surprised me was how I wanted to get my hands on the second book. Even though I enjoyed the first book, I didn't think I was going to pick up the second book, however I was surprised to see how badly I wanted to know what happened next.
In the beginning, Alina was portrayed as a frail girl who was just a simple mapmaker in the First Army. Suddenly after a life altering event, we find out she is the Sun Summoner, one of the most powerful Grisha in Ravka. Throughout the story, I liked her character. I will admit though, the amount of times that she criticized herself did get kind of annoying after a while. Mal is slightly hard to describe... Even though he is one of the main characters in the story, he was only there for a little bit in the beginning and only reappeared near the end of the story. He is mentioned several times throughout the book, but it was surprising to see him as a main character and the large role he had. We see past memories of him from what Alina remembers from their childhood, but it was hard to determine who he was as a character unless you read the rest of the series. The Darkling was a dark, mysterious and charming character. From the very beginning, I never trusted him! He seemed way too easy to trust, and since his name was The Darkling that might have been why was hesitant to believe anything that came out his mouth. His character relied on fear and charm to get everyone to follow him willingly because he had always done something to win their favor. Something about his character always rubbed me the wrong way, but I thought his character was very well developed.
One thing I have to mention is the love triangle in the story. Normally, love triangles don't bother me and I kind of like them (as long as they're done right), however I didn't care for this one. Even though I knew Alina had strong feelings for Mal and vise versa, he was barely there in the first book. Then when I found out that suddenly the Darkling has feelings for Alina, it kind of came out of nowhere, there was nothing leading up to show that he had feelings for her, besides the one phrase he said to Alina, "like calls to like." Overall, I enjoyed reading this book and I'm curious to see how the series ends!
If you're interested in checking out Leigh's pages, the links are below along with places you can get the book.
