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A review by asriram
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
3.0
This was an okay book.
Honestly, after hearing quite a bit of negative responses from my friends who loved Six of Crows but said this book was quite bad, I was expecting a mess. And it’s not a great book, to be sure. It isn’t even a good book, necessarily. The plot is very formulaic: it’s very much in the vein of the YA books of the 2010’s, with all of the pros and cons of those plots. The worldbuilding is interesting, though I’m not sure if that’s just because watching the show and reading the Six of Crows duology familiarized me with the worldbuilding beforehand. The characters are largely fine, the plot’s fine — in short, everything’s quite average in this book, which is both kinda disappointing and not really surprising. If it was as bad as I’d feared, it’d likely have not gotten a show, and a show which I liked.
That’s essentially the review — it’s a fine book. I’ll definitely finish the trilogy tomorrow or the day after, whenever I have the time. And it’ll be good to read the King of Scars duology and see these characters in a story that’s actually good or even (hopefully) great.
Honestly, after hearing quite a bit of negative responses from my friends who loved Six of Crows but said this book was quite bad, I was expecting a mess. And it’s not a great book, to be sure. It isn’t even a good book, necessarily. The plot is very formulaic: it’s very much in the vein of the YA books of the 2010’s, with all of the pros and cons of those plots. The worldbuilding is interesting, though I’m not sure if that’s just because watching the show and reading the Six of Crows duology familiarized me with the worldbuilding beforehand. The characters are largely fine, the plot’s fine — in short, everything’s quite average in this book, which is both kinda disappointing and not really surprising. If it was as bad as I’d feared, it’d likely have not gotten a show, and a show which I liked.
That’s essentially the review — it’s a fine book. I’ll definitely finish the trilogy tomorrow or the day after, whenever I have the time. And it’ll be good to read the King of Scars duology and see these characters in a story that’s actually good or even (hopefully) great.