From the Bookshelf of Vampires, Weres and Fae! …

Shadow and Bone (Shadow and Bone, #1)

Leigh Bardugo

Start date: December 1, 2017

Finish date: December 31, 2017

Discussion: After the Book Discussion

Why we're reading this: December Book of the Month
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What Members Thought

Dec 12, 2016 destiny ♡ howling libraries rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, ya, owned-p

#0.1 The Demon in the Wood ★★★★★
#1 Shadow and Bone ★★★☆☆
#1.5 The Tailor ★★★★★
#2 Siege and Storm ★★★☆☆
#3 Ruin and Rising ★★★★☆

reread update: December 2017
This book was so much better the first time I read it. No, scratch that - I think my standards were so much lower the first time. It's not a bad book, but you can definitely tell it's from before Leigh found her groove, and the characters are mostly not enjoyable at all (aside from the Darkling, Genya, and Botkin). The "twist" still feels bad, a ...more

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Sep 24, 2015 Chrissy rated it liked it

Shelves: vwf-7500-books-in-2021

Reread in January 2021 for a buddy read in the VWF group and also to refresh my memory before the Netflix adaptation in April.

This was my introduction to the Grishaverse and I first read the trilogy shortly before Six of Crows was released. I liked it well enough. And I still do like it just as much as I did then… and nowhere near as much as I love the Six of Crows duology. I promise that the rest of this review is going to actually talk about Shadow & Bone, but first I want to encourage you tha Reread in January 2021 for a buddy read in the VWF group and also to refresh my memory before the Netflix adaptation in April.

This was my introduction to the Grishaverse and I first read the trilogy shortly before Six of Crows was released. I liked it well enough. And I still do like it just as much as I did then… and nowhere near as much as I love the Six of Crows duology. I promise that the rest of this review is going to actually talk about Shadow & Bone, but first I want to encourage you that even if you didn’t like Shadow & Bone enough to keep reading the rest of Alina’s story, you should still give Six of Crows a try. Both series can be read completely independently of each other, and they are so very different from each other in a lot of ways.

This story is a pretty typical YA fantasy, good vs evil, with a little bit of questing for magical creatures thrown in. You get your friendships, rivalries, romance, lots of angst, betrayal… all you could possibly want from the genre. With Alina, our first person narrator, we have a typical main character who discovers she had magic she never knew about, who then has to deal with magic lessons (which isn’t my favorite way of explaining your magic system to your readers), but still has time for a ridiculous amount of pining after Mal and getting hormonal about the Darkling, plus having to deal with a stereotypical “mean girl”. The pace was kind of slow and meandering, the plot dwelling too long on things that weren’t all that interesting to me: the seemingly endless magical and combat lessons, the “high school drama” at the Little Palace, followed by running around the countryside for what felt like forever before something finally happened in the end. The final showdown was well done, but everything leading up to it dragged a bit. The romance was… okay. It did tug at my heart on occasion and even made me shed a tear or two, so I don’t hate this pairing the way some readers do, but I’m not completely in love with it either.

One of the best and most interesting parts of this story is the villain. There are a lot of fans who genuinely love him, and I'm not one of them! I don't love him even a little bit, but I love hating him. He's just so deliciously evil, all while seeming convinced - and convincing many others - that he's one of the good guys. No one goes out into the world with the goal of being evil, the best and most interesting villains always think they're in the right. ...more

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