Book: Shadow and Bone (Grisha Trilogy, #1)
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Published: Current edition being reviewed - 31st July 2014 (First published June 5th 2012)
Publisher: Indigo
Pages: 308
Rating: 5/5 stars
Shadow and Bone follows Alina Starkov, an orphan, who by all accounts, seems unremarkable. She's shy, insecure and slightly pathetic. She has very few workable skills. Okay, seems simple enough.
However, when her regiment (she's a mapmaker in the army) gets attacked and her best friend (Mal, short for Malyen Oretsev) is critically injured, she discovers that she has a dormant power. She can produce and manipulate light. Pretty cool, eh? As it turns out, no-one else in the land has this power, so that makes her pretty unique. Not at all ordinary.
Also, her power could be the key to defeating the Shadow Fold. What's that, you say? Well it's a pretty creepy fog that has engulfed a significant chunk of Ravka and is filled with vicious, deadly monsters such as the Volcra, which feed on human flesh. Fantastic.
So of course, everyone wants a piece of Alina with her new sparkly powers, and she becomes essentially the top model of Ravka, and is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha.
The Grisha are a magical elite, each gifted with a power; the corporalki, for example, are considered the most valuable soldiers, and include heartrenders, who can slow a person's heartbeat, or suffocate them by taking the air from their lungs. Pretty serious stuff. Alina is thrust into this world with literally zero knowledge of what awaits her, and understandably, she is completely unprepared for the cut-throat politics of the court. Everyone wants her to do her sparkly light thing and save the land, yet she has no clue how to control her powers or make them work on demand.
Without Mal at her side, she finds herself drawn to the mysterious Darkling, the leader of the Grisha. He's got everything - power, charisma, and of course he's devilishly handsome. He's pretty much the Troy Bolton of the royal court - if Troy wore a lot of black - girls love him, guys want to be him etc. etc.
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However, the characters in the book are far from being straightforward; they are three-dimensional, their motives remain hidden for a vast majority of the book and they develop and grow and change. This is especially true of Alina who makes the biggest journey, character wise, out of all, however she still retains some of her vulnerability, which ultimately makes it easier to connect with her as a character.
Shadow and Bone has everything - adventure, mystery, intrigue, and some pretty kick-ass characters. The narrative starts off seeming relatively simple, however this dramatically changes throughout the novel, and indeed there are darker undertones toward the end, marking a climactic start to the trilogy. I thought Shadow and Bone would fall into the same cliches as other young adult novels, however, it really surprised me with the direction it took. I highly recommend this, and the other two books in the trilogy, it honestly just gets better and better.
However, when her regiment (she's a mapmaker in the army) gets attacked and her best friend (Mal, short for Malyen Oretsev) is critically injured, she discovers that she has a dormant power. She can produce and manipulate light. Pretty cool, eh? As it turns out, no-one else in the land has this power, so that makes her pretty unique. Not at all ordinary.
Also, her power could be the key to defeating the Shadow Fold. What's that, you say? Well it's a pretty creepy fog that has engulfed a significant chunk of Ravka and is filled with vicious, deadly monsters such as the Volcra, which feed on human flesh. Fantastic.
So of course, everyone wants a piece of Alina with her new sparkly powers, and she becomes essentially the top model of Ravka, and is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha.
The Grisha are a magical elite, each gifted with a power; the corporalki, for example, are considered the most valuable soldiers, and include heartrenders, who can slow a person's heartbeat, or suffocate them by taking the air from their lungs. Pretty serious stuff. Alina is thrust into this world with literally zero knowledge of what awaits her, and understandably, she is completely unprepared for the cut-throat politics of the court. Everyone wants her to do her sparkly light thing and save the land, yet she has no clue how to control her powers or make them work on demand.
Without Mal at her side, she finds herself drawn to the mysterious Darkling, the leader of the Grisha. He's got everything - power, charisma, and of course he's devilishly handsome. He's pretty much the Troy Bolton of the royal court - if Troy wore a lot of black - girls love him, guys want to be him etc. etc.
.gif)
However, the characters in the book are far from being straightforward; they are three-dimensional, their motives remain hidden for a vast majority of the book and they develop and grow and change. This is especially true of Alina who makes the biggest journey, character wise, out of all, however she still retains some of her vulnerability, which ultimately makes it easier to connect with her as a character.
Shadow and Bone has everything - adventure, mystery, intrigue, and some pretty kick-ass characters. The narrative starts off seeming relatively simple, however this dramatically changes throughout the novel, and indeed there are darker undertones toward the end, marking a climactic start to the trilogy. I thought Shadow and Bone would fall into the same cliches as other young adult novels, however, it really surprised me with the direction it took. I highly recommend this, and the other two books in the trilogy, it honestly just gets better and better.
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