Review: SHADOW AND BONE

Shadow And Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Book 1 of The Grisha series
Genre: high fantasy

About Shadow And Bone:

The Shadow Fold, a swathe of impenetrable darkness, crawling with monsters that feast on human flesh, is slowly destroying the once-great nation of Ravka.

Alina, a pale, lonely orphan, discovers a unique power that thrusts her into the lavish world of the kingdom’s magical elite—the Grisha. Could she be the key to unravelling the dark fabric of the Shadow Fold and setting Ravka free?

The Darkling, a creature of seductive charm and terrifying power, leader of the Grisha. If Alina is to fulfil her destiny, she must discover how to unlock her gift and face up to her dangerous attraction to him.

But what of Mal, Alina’s childhood best friend? As Alina contemplates her dazzling new future, why can’t she ever quite forget him?

Glorious. Epic. Irresistible. Romance.

Source: Info in the About Shadow And Bone was taken from GoodReads at http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17658751-shadow-and-bone on 23/06/2013.

My Thoughts:

I understand that this book managed to butcher the Russian culture into an ugly mess such that anyone with a smidgen of knowledge of the Russian culture hated this book. Or, gave it a low rating at GoodReads. Now, I am not Russian nor know the Russian culture, so I was fine and totally oblivious about how bad the Russian culture got mangled in this book. Sometimes ignorance is a bliss! However having said that, this book gets a demerit for mangling someone else's culture. Poking fun at yourself and your own culture is one thing. But doing so to other people or other people's culture is just plain old rude. But on the other hand, if the "culture mangling demerit" is taken out of the equation entirely, I have to admit that Leigh Bardugo weaves a fantastic plot of struggle for survival and coming of age story set in an extraordinary world of monsters and men. Gotta give the author kudos for the beautiful world building! What I didn't like about it though is the heroine going too stupid to live to create a dilemma in the story and so the heroes/heroines can show off and save the world. This shows me that the author might have a great imagination but plot building is not her forte. At the end of it though, I enjoyed this book and if not for the "culture mangling demerit", this book would have garnered a whole lot higher rating with me.

Empirical Evaluation:
Story telling quality = 3.5
Character development = 3
Story itself = 4
Ending = 3.5
World building = 4.5
Cover art: US = 2 / UK = 4
Pace = 3
Plot = 2.5
Culture mangling demerit = -1

Overall Rating: 3 out of 5 cherries


Books In The Grisha Series:


Shadow And Bone Book Trailer:

FTC Disclosure:
No money recieved for this review.