Reviews with content warning for Suicide attempt - Ruin and Rising

I loved this trilogy so so much if i could give it 6 stars i would.

I think Bardugo perfectly balanced the morals of the characters and the idea that the more power Alina had, the more blurry her morals became.

For example, in book 1 (shadow and bone) we’re introduced to Alina, the main character, and her best friend mal. Alina works as a cartographer for the first army and mal is a talented tracker. After the incident in the fold Alina is found to be a very powerful type of Grisha called the sun summoner. Throughout the book we see Alina wishing her power away just to be back with mal in the first army again; and when the darkling, Alinas only match and the leader of the second army, is looking for something to amplify Alinas power, she ends up agreeing to it. She soon finds out that the darkling is doing it for the wrong reasons and runs away. Eventually she finds the stag from the help of mal but hesitates to kill it, from this we can see Alina has a strong moral compass at this point in the trilogy.

However, this heavily contrasts the end of book three when she finds out mal, her boyfriend at this point, is the third amplifier. Without much hesitation at all, certainly not as much hesitation as she had with Morozova’s stag, she puts a knife through him. She didn’t want to do it but eventually her greed for power took over, as we can see from the quote

“I would never know if it was greed or selfishness that moved my hand”.

We can also see that Alina is slowly turning into the darkling throughout the entirety of the trilogy, and if she would’ve kept the power of all three amplifiers and lived eternally, she definitely would’ve.

Another thing i loved about this trilogy is the way Bardugo portrayed the darkling, a morally grey character who’s heart is in the right place, but goes about it the wrong way. For example, throughout the series we start to see the reasons for why the darkling has done what he’s done, like taking control of Alina through the stags collar in order to enter and control the fold. At first, we’re completely against the darkling and what he’s doing but as the trilogy unravels we start to discover more and more of the Darkling’s character and with that, his reasons. It all started out as building a safe place for Grisha to live in peace, without the fear of others ; but then he got greedy. He started wanting more for Ravka, but he went about it the complete wrong way. He tried to invoke fear, and in that he did, but it only hurt Ravka in the end. His greed and hunger for power kept growing and although i will say he lost sight of his morals centuries ago, i wont say that he lost track of his end goal completely. He wanted a safe place for Ravka, and he wanted to do it using the fold. Right reason, terrible execution. I completely believe that if Alina would’ve lived as Long as Aleksander, she would’ve been just as bad, if not worse. Without her friends to ground her, especially Mal, Nikolai and Genya, she Would’ve lost track already.

Anyway Stan Nikolai he’s the loml 🤭🤭 and this book was so sad oml

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prettynerdy3's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense 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

4.0

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anielabooks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Overall, this was a great series. I felt very attached to the characters, and I am excited to read the other books inside the grishaverse. Normally, I would get bored with talk of war plans but I think Bardugo did a good job at keeping it interesting. I also loved the ending she gave Alina; It was very heartwarming to see. The plot twists were well done and I hadn’t seen many of them coming.

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bookswstella's review

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adventurous challenging dark emotional informative mysterious slow-paced

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

3.0

I didn’t get the ”wow-feeling” but it was good! Between all of the three books I liked Siege and Storms the most!

In like the end of Siege and storms I started to wondering whether if I wanted Alina to end up with Mal or Nikolai, and that thought followed me through Ruin and Rising too!

I still don’t know if I would have liked it more if Alina ended up with Nikolai.

My favorite character from R&R is definitely Misha!! I adore the the small little moments when Mal is With Misha, especially when Misha is curled up against Mal! Those moments make me like Mal more!

I think all three of these books had pretty long boring parts, like in my opinion the book was kinda only thrilling when it was ”war”. Those boring parts was what didn’t give the triology the ”Wow-feeling”.

But I love the moments where the darkling shows himself vulnerable because that makes him more human which I like.
And I also love that you get to know his real name!

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