From the Bookshelf of Vampires, Weres and Fae! …

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

First we had to find the firebird. Until then, all our hopes rested on the shoulders of one untrustworthy prince.

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

First we had to find the firebird. Until then, all our hopes rested on the shoulders of one untrustworthy prince.

I couldn’t deny what I’d felt in Novyi Zem or the truth of what the Darkling had shown me: my own sadness, my own longing, reflected back to me in his bleak gray eyes.

“Mal’s always been like that. You could drop him in a camp full of Fjerdan assassins, and he’d come out carried on their shoulders. He just blooms wherever he’s planted.”
“And you?”
“I’m more of a weed,” I said drily.

“You know, for two people with a love eternal, you’re awfully insecure.”

This was what they would be talking about: the prince who remembered an ordinary soldier’s name, the prince who had fought side by side with them without concern for wealth or pedigree.

“Oh, and the easiest way to make someone furious is to tell her to calm down.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or throw my shoe at him.

The crisp edge of a winter wind. Bare branches. The smell of absence, the smell of night.

“Then I’d be alone, too,” he said, and he stayed the whole night through, till the lamps burned down to nothing.