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My Review:Title: Shadow and Bone
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Series: The Shadow and Bone Trilogy #1, Grishaverse #1
Published by: Audible Studios, Square Fish
Release Date: June 5, 2017
Format: Audiobook, Paperback
Narrator: Lauren Fortgang
Pages: 356
Length: 9 hours and 21 minutes
Genres: Fantasy, Young Adult
Source: Audible
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon ✩ B&N ✩ Google ✩ Kobo ✩ iBooks ✩ IndieBound ✩ Book Depository
My rating:
Blurb:Enter the Grishaverse with Book One of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom.
Soldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold―a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.
Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country’s magical military elite―and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift.
As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation.
Welcome to Ravka . . . a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems.
4 stars — Well that left me a whole mess of confused and conflicted and overwrought.
I started off listening to the audiobook with this one. And honestly, Ms. Fortgang was solid. She had clear voices, good pacing, emotions. But…I kept finding my mind wandering. And after awhile I figured it just wasn’t working for me, and I got the paperback — and my reading went a lot faster then! I will say that a) it was nice to hear her pronounce most things, so I had a feel for it when I went to reading; and b) her Darkling voice was so smooth it was almost creepy…which is kind of apropos.
I loved a lot about this book, but there were also elements that were only okay. I found that because the world is so complex, I occasionally wanted more information and had a hard time getting sucked in immediately. I wasn’t huge on the age old “everyone is beautiful except me” aspect. I get now that there was a bit of a purpose behind some of that, but there was a lot of time spent talking about everyone’s looks and appearance, and at the time I was listening to it, I just wanted them to move on to something more interesting.
Alina was wonderfully sassy and sarcastic. I enjoyed her dry wit. I thought there was a good balance of her fear to her fierceness. I didn’t quite always get the whole picture of why she would deny her powers until much later, and that also left me not as sucked in until that point in the book.
Mal comes across kind of flat at the beginning, and I wasn’t sure how things were going to progress with him (or if he was even that important). And I was surprised at his level of anger initially. He came across a bit like a dick. But between the moments where he finds her and the end, I totally fell for him. The letter from him that was included in the bonus materials at the back of my paperback also helped ENORMOUSLY.
And then we have the Darkling. *sigh* I both love and hate complicated characters. I want more clear cut, I want to KNOW FOR SURE what the truth is…but I also think it’s more interesting when they have more dimensions. Regardless, I’m not a fan at the moment. I think it didn’t help that his “voice” in the audiobook was just this side of creepy.
Lots of interesting secondary characters, quite a few of which now leave me conflicted. Gonna be interesting to see what happens with all of them.
And then there’s that ending. Wow. Didn’t see that coming. In fact, didn’t see a few of the reveals coming. Gonna have to move on the next book real quick!
COYER Community: I buddy read this book with Lillian from Mom With a Reading Problem, and while I fell behind when I was listening, it was so much fun to be able to discuss different aspects at different times! She also gave it 4 stars, and you can read her review here.
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