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A review by princessrobotiv
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
4.0
3.5, on the 4 side
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Shadow and Bone surprised me.
Even before the enormous twist just over midway through the book (a twist even I didn't see coming, something that hasn't happened in quite some time), I was enjoying the story. The prose was just detailed enough to build up the world and create momentum and tension, but it never bogged itself down by trying too hard to be something it wasn't. As a result, I found myself flying through the chapters. Again - this hasn't happened for a while, so I was pretty pleased.
Sure, the story was formulaic: downtrodden and overlooked girl discovers a hidden power and is whisked into a life of trial and romance. Girl faces snobbish mean girls much prettier than her (oh, except she's lowkey pretty herself, of course, and the text is sure to let the reader know it!). Girl vacillates between two boys: her longtime childhood friend and the darkly mysterious bad boy who awakens some hidden part of her.
Aside from the girl-hate, I'm not opposed to any of the above, so long as they are executed in a way that's somewhat novel and generally entertaining. Bardugo's Russian-inspired setting was a fresh landscape for a tale like this and really held my interest (though I am a little wary of it re: was it simply another way for Bardugo to cop out of creating diverse characters . . ?) In any case, it was fresher than the beat-to-death horse that is England-equivalent fantasy worlds.
I'll also admit that - even when it seemed like the love triangle would remain just as trite and silly as all the others, I was still pretty into the dynamic between the Darkling/Alina. I dig power imbalances in relationships, what can I say?
But HOO, boy - then the whole damn thing flipped.
Bardugo committed to the Darkling's monstrousness. We see him maim, we see him murder, we see him massacre an entire town. He puts our heroine in a literal collar and assaults her. His greed and his selfishness and his misguided sense of morality are utterly exposed. And in the end, Alina rejects him. She rejects his actions, his methods, and his morals, and she escapes.
It's pretty great.
This doesn't mean that a romance is off the table, of course. And to be quite honest, I'm really interested in how something like that would progress after the crimes that have been committed. It has to be handled with delicacy and some degree of skill. I think the fear of community backlash and feminist critique has made authors shy away from presenting this sort of dynamic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - critique exists for a reason, after all - but what can I say? I miss the mess; I miss the "gray." I'm hoping we get some of that in the next installments.
We'll see how this evolves!
-
Shadow and Bone surprised me.
Even before the enormous twist just over midway through the book (a twist even I didn't see coming, something that hasn't happened in quite some time), I was enjoying the story. The prose was just detailed enough to build up the world and create momentum and tension, but it never bogged itself down by trying too hard to be something it wasn't. As a result, I found myself flying through the chapters. Again - this hasn't happened for a while, so I was pretty pleased.
Sure, the story was formulaic: downtrodden and overlooked girl discovers a hidden power and is whisked into a life of trial and romance. Girl faces snobbish mean girls much prettier than her (oh, except she's lowkey pretty herself, of course, and the text is sure to let the reader know it!). Girl vacillates between two boys: her longtime childhood friend and the darkly mysterious bad boy who awakens some hidden part of her.
Aside from the girl-hate, I'm not opposed to any of the above, so long as they are executed in a way that's somewhat novel and generally entertaining. Bardugo's Russian-inspired setting was a fresh landscape for a tale like this and really held my interest (though I am a little wary of it re: was it simply another way for Bardugo to cop out of creating diverse characters . . ?) In any case, it was fresher than the beat-to-death horse that is England-equivalent fantasy worlds.
I'll also admit that - even when it seemed like the love triangle would remain just as trite and silly as all the others, I was still pretty into the dynamic between the Darkling/Alina. I dig power imbalances in relationships, what can I say?
But HOO, boy - then the whole damn thing flipped.
Spoiler
I'm thrilled about the path Bardugo chose in regards to the Darkling. A recent trend in YA romance is to present a so-called monstrous male character and to slowly humanize him throughout the course of a novel or series. I like this, too. But I hadn't realized how much I longed for the opposite approach.Bardugo committed to the Darkling's monstrousness. We see him maim, we see him murder, we see him massacre an entire town. He puts our heroine in a literal collar and assaults her. His greed and his selfishness and his misguided sense of morality are utterly exposed. And in the end, Alina rejects him. She rejects his actions, his methods, and his morals, and she escapes.
It's pretty great.
This doesn't mean that a romance is off the table, of course. And to be quite honest, I'm really interested in how something like that would progress after the crimes that have been committed. It has to be handled with delicacy and some degree of skill. I think the fear of community backlash and feminist critique has made authors shy away from presenting this sort of dynamic. This isn't necessarily a bad thing - critique exists for a reason, after all - but what can I say? I miss the mess; I miss the "gray." I'm hoping we get some of that in the next installments.
We'll see how this evolves!