Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo Series: The Grisha #1
Published by Henry Holt and Co. on June 5th, 2012
Genres: Fantasy, YA
Goodreads
The Shadow Fold, a swathe of impenetrable darkness, crawling with monsters that feast on human flesh, is slowly destroying the once-great nation of Ravka.
Alina, a pale, lonely orphan, discovers a unique power that thrusts her into the lavish world of the kingdom’s magical elite—the Grisha. Could she be the key to unravelling the dark fabric of the Shadow Fold and setting Ravka free?
The Darkling, a creature of seductive charm and terrifying power, leader of the Grisha. If Alina is to fulfill her destiny, she must discover how to unlock her gift and face up to her dangerous attraction to him.
But what of Mal, Alina’s childhood best friend? As Alina contemplates her dazzling new future, why can’t she ever quite forget him?
Glorious. Epic. Irresistible. Romance.
You know what, I’ve been working on this damn review for 2 freaking days and I’m tired! With that being said prepare yourself for babbling, ranting, swooning, cursing and Bardugo drinking my tears. I would say sorry but:
For the past few weeks all my lovely twitter friends have been baffled by the fact that I’m just now reading Shadow and Bone. Of course they got on my ass and screamed at me to start it immediately. Me, being the stubborn woman I am, said uh no, and I started it the next day (I’m a rebel!) and here is what Shadow and Bone did to me.
It started off pretty slow. Bardugo introduces us to our heroine Alina who is a mapmaker in the army with her bestfriend Mal. Not very interesting right? That’s what I thought too, for those first few pages, then she started to show me this amazingly detailed and horrifying world. That’s when I knew I wouldn’t be able to put the book down anytime soon.
Alina and Mal are headed into “The Fold”, a desolate wasteland filled with man eating monsters and no light, in hopes of reaching the True Sea for trade. “The Fold” was made hundreds of year ago by a Darkling and it was slowly starting to expanding causing fear throughout the world. Which is exactly why Alina is horrified of entering The Fold she knows her chances of survival are slim to none even with the help of the Grisha (powerful people able summon fire, conform metals and heal with a touch).And boy was he right! Two seconds into the fold and her platoon is attacked by Volcra. Flying man eatting beast that swop down and start picking off the soldiers one by one.
Can I just take a second to say bravo Bardugo! I had no idea I could almost wet myself because of a fictional beast. Point to you ma’am.
From here some spoiler type stuff happens that reveal Alina to be a very powerful person who may be able to destroy The Fold. Sadly after this point I started to get a little bored:
It went from this action packed, oh my gosh I’m a WHAT? to a stand still. Alina was starting to aggravate me and MONTH’S had gone by with absolutely NO action. Yes I learned stuff, yes it was still detailed, yes there was an amount of mystery that I couldn’t imagine but I wanted Alina and “The Darkling” to go make some heads roll! But Katrina of Bookish Things and More told me to relax…more or less:
Of course I doubted Katrina and I thought maybe I had fallen victim to hype again, but about and hour after her tweet everything changed:
Bardugo made me fall in love with these characters, with this world, with the POSSIBILITIES! And then she said “hahaha gotcha!”. I’m usually impossible to catch off guard when it comes to books and movies. I can correctly guess the upcoming plot twist and ending before I reach the halfway mark but Bardugo just ruined that! She took everything I thought I knew, everything I loved, everything I wanted and she said:
And YES I was mad! I felt betrayed! Bamboozled! Hoodwinked! I just knew I wasn’t going to love this book and then Bardugo was like NO! YOU WILL LOVE IT! AND I SHALL DRINK YOUR TEARS WHEN YOU FINISH!!
She DRANK MY TEARS!! She didn’t even feel remorse for making me a blubbering mess when I finished this amazing book! She just patted my hand and DRANK MY TEARS! And the worse part is that Katrina of Bookish Things and More and Shannon of Twilight Sleep KNEW what was coming! And instead of cushioning the blow like good friends they let me fall head first into a revelation I wasn’t ready for! And to add insult to injury I had to apologize to them for not trusting them when it came to the greatness that is Shadow and Bone!
But that’s enough of my garbled rambling. I’m sure I have made little to no sense in this review nor did I explain anything but these are the words that came to my brain when I looked back on this fantastic read!
