Reviews with content warning for Death of parent - Shadow and Bone

Reviews tagging 'Death of parent'

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

106 reviews

david_slack110507's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.25

I feel highly conflicted about this book, it has its good and bad aspects. I really liked the journey we get with Alina throughout the book, her character development is excellent, and I hope she'll only get better in the next two books in this trilogy. I also found the main plot to be interesting and the mythology/lore of the world was extremely interesting.

However, my negative thoughts outweigh the positive ones I have such as the formatting or more specifically the chapters. The chapters in this are mostly 15-20 pages long each which makes it difficult if I want to go and read for a few minutes as I prefer to complete the whole chapter to avoid any confusion as to where I am the next time, I pick up the book. The first half of the book is excruciatingly slow and difficult to read on through because it focuses heavily on setting up the enormous world of the Grishaverse and that was why this took me nearly 2 months to complete, alongside it not being as interesting compared to the other books I was reading at the same time (which may have been an issue on my part tbh)

Another issue I had was that despite the extremely in-depth and fascinating lore and mythology of the Grishaverse, it can be very daunting, confusing, and sometimes hard to understand/remember what was what which made me struggle to continue the book at parts. I also didn't feel too strongly about many of the characters in the book with probably Baghra, The Darkling (Disregarding the kind of boring romance between him and Alina), Alina herself and possibly the real MVP: Genya being the standouts but nearly everyone else just didn't capture my interest and/or enthusiasm.

Overall, a mixed start to the Shadow and Bone trilogy. A start that I can only hope improves as it continues as I do feel invested enough to want to continue reading the trilogy.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ ~ Good but not great

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shaylashaylala's review against another edition

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adventurous mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes

3.5

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taylorswiftobsessed's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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onefineelephant's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark hopeful mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

7/10. I think the magic system and even the political system are interesting. However, I usually hate love triangles and this is no exception. I typically love the friends-to-lovers trope but Mal kind of sucks at the beginning. Like, who would sleep with a ton of girls when you're actually in love with your best friend the whole time?? I like Mal more by the end. Also, them confessing their feelings wasn't satisfying at all and fell kind of flat. I think that the character of the Darkling is super fascinating and complex, which I love. I am not a fan of Alina which is really unfortunate because she's the main character - but this is because she is TOO MUCH of a main character. She just wants to fit in when she clearly is unique, she is a peasant in high society, she only has one friend and doesn't get along with other girls (aka she's not like other girls), and she won't kill when it is absolutely necessary. The dialogue is kind of so bad that it's good. Like it's very bad but most of the time it made me laugh because of how bad it is instead of making me say "this is stupid." The ending was awful, in my opinion. I know there are more books in the series but the events of the last 50 pages made me say "what the f is this?" about 8 times.

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