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Shadow and Bone Series

Shadow and Bone 

by Leigh Barduo



I really enjoyed this series! This was Bardugo's first series, I read Six of Crows first, but Shadow and Bone really helped me understand the power of the Grisha. Overall, I'd say this was a hero's story, with Alina as our hero. 

This series was about how the world has a natural balance, and there are Grisha who have a type of ability, and there are three branches, the Corporalki, Etherealki, and the Materialki. 

The Corporealki deal in the living and the dead, as in bodily functions. The Etherealki are summoners, meaning they can summon wind, or fire, or water. Materialki can create things, they're tinkerers.

This story focuses on two summoners, the Darkling and Alina. The Darkling has been around for hundreds of years, and he can summon darkness. Alina is born and turns into the Sun Summoner, she can summon light, and they are the only two of their kind. The Darkling is well feared and the second hand of the king, still a servant, but royalty in his own right among the Grisha. 

The future of the world falls to Alina, who is the only one who has power equal to the Darkling, and she wants to stop the rule of darkness. 

I want to talk about one character in particular. Nikolia Lanstov, bastard prince of the realm. The whole second book was about this man, and his impact on Alina's life. 

He was charming, smart, resourceful, not vengeful or power hunger, he helped Alina right away, tired to court her but didn't get upset when she rejected him. He was almost too perfect.

The reason he is my favorite character is because he always kept calm under pressure. He was Alina's rock, always confident and had something up his sleeve, a back up plan. Of course, he suffered an attack by the Darkling, he had to be shown breaking down, for the reader to understand this was it. Once Nikolia broke down, that's when the story gets desperate. 

He also reminds me of Kaz Brekker, from Six of Crows. I believe he was the inspiration for Kaz, who always had a plan, was calm, kept his head in bad situations. Kaz felt more real, though, because Kaz had a lot of baggage and lot of pain from his past that caused him to hold everyone at a distance. Kaz had less sass and did more brooding.

Also, the reader knew there was a plan coming up, in Six of Crows, but it was never explained to us before. The reader just saw the plan unfold and had no idea if what was happening was part of the plan or not, but I really liked that. It made the story more interesting. In Shadow and Bone, the reader always knew the plan ahead of time, so of course something had to go wrong or else we get would the same thing twice in a short amount of time. 

Nikolia was one of my favorite characters, and I liked the ending of the series as well. It fleshed out the last of the 12 stages of a hero's journey by Alina loosing her power, but it went to hundreds of others. Sure, she lost her own magic, but she got the man she loved and her freedom.

:)


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