Shadow and bone (Leigh Bardugo)

I finally came around to reading the Grisha trilogy as promised in my post about Six of crows, so here's my review!

The orphans and best friends Alina and Mal are serving in Ravka's army when Alina's hidden powers are discovered and she's revealed as sun summoner, one of the most powerful grishas to ever live, introducing her to a whole new world, where soon everybody tries to seduce her in order to gain an advantage in the fight for the throne and power over Ravka.

"I've been waiting for you a long time, Alina," he said. "You and I are going to change the world."

I absolutely love this series, and my crappy summary definitely doesn't do it justice, but since the story is so complex, I'm struggling a lot with summarizing it. It's really fast paced and got me hooked from the very first page. The story is fantastic and full of plot twists, which I certainly didn't see coming and made me love the story even more.
The writing was good, but definitely nothing extraordinary, even though I really liked the way the prolouge and epilouges are written, however the thing that really stood out to me is the fantastic worldbuilding. This is the first book I've read that's so heavily inspired by Russian and Germanic culture and although it was super unfamiliar, I enjoyed it a lot. Another quite important element in this story that I don't think I've ever seen in any books I've read, especially not in the YA-genre, is the religious extremism, which fits perfectly in the world and adds a whole new dimension to the story. I also liked the magical system and the fact that it's explained so well, and not just seeing the grisha society, but also the way grisha are treated by the rest of the population, that doesn't have any powers. Another aspect that made the story way more intense is the circumstance that people without magical abilites are far from defenseless, since Ravka is an industrial country and pistols, guns and rifles are common weapons and can kill all grishas, since their power is limited.
And don't even get me started on the characters. I absolutely adored all of them, and many made it into my "all-time favorite chracters" list. Alina Starkov, the main character and heroine of the story, had a loneliness and stubborness, that makes her very relatable and likeable, and she is actually one of the very few heroines I've read about who didn't annoy me at some point. She goes through a crazy character development from a sickly young girl to one of the most powerful grishas that ever existed and seeing her struggle with choosing between good and evil, between light and darkness is amazing. But the character I probably enjoyed even more is the Darkling, who is so complex, interesting, manipulative and completely intriguing. I liked every scene he is in simply because of his presence so much more. Seeing his vulnerability and his longing for sympathy and understanding in one moment and in the next how he tortures and kills innocent people makes him such a good villain. His relationship with Alina is definitely super interesting and understandable, and I'm not gonna lie, the evil part in me is shipping them a lot. And let's be honest, you can't be able help yourself but love him, especially in the scenes in which more of his tragic backstory and feelings are revealed. At the beginnig I had my troubles with the second main character Mal Oretsev since he reminded me so much of Gale Hawthorne from the Hunger games trilogy, whom I hate so much. But I started to like him at the end of Shadow and bone and really liked him during Siege and storm and Ruin and rising, as more of his personality and feelings are shown. This is one of the very few books (the other ones are the Clockwork angel trilogy by Cassandra Clare and A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens) in which I don't just don't mind the love triangle, but actually really enjoyed it and in a way it is quite cruicial to the story since it represents Alina's struggle between good and evil. My other even bigger crush in these books is Nikolai Lantsov, who sadly doesn't appear until the second book in the series. I'm not kidding, he's just perfect and that's basically all you need to know. He's adorable, charming, extremely charismatic, funny and sarcastic but can also be reckless, manipulative and brutal if he has to. I also enjoyed most of the minor characters, especially Zoya Nazyalensky, and was very suprised to see that even those go through character developments.
I also really loved the ending (even though it made me cry sooo much) and I'm pleased with the decisions Leigh Bardugo made in order to strike us with the moral of the story.

Rating:

Shadow and bone: 4.5/5 ✹

Siege and storm: 5/5 ✹

Ruin and rising: 5/5 ✹

I genuinly didn't mean to write so much, but I hope you enjoyed this review anyway. If you're looking for an epic fantasy series you definitely need to check the Grisha trilogy out! And I also can't recommend the latest book by Leigh Bardugo called Six of crows enough, since it's truly fantastic. If you're interested you can read my review here.

Leah