Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2) in Pick-a-Shelf

Nov 29, 2016 Lauren⁷ 💜 rated it it was amazing

Shelves: library-has-a-copy, favorites, young-adult-teen-new-adult, fantasy-science-fiction

This book has been out for over three years now and therefore any spoilers are fair game. As thus, I will not be hiding them behind spoiler tags.

I found this book to be a huge improvement on its predecessor in nearly every way and on nearly every level. The plot was much more interesting and far meatier and just plain better than that of Shadow and Bone. We open with Alina and Mal across the sea in Cofton attempting to evade the Darkling by living there and blending in amongst the citizenry. In This book has been out for over three years now and therefore any spoilers are fair game. As thus, I will not be hiding them behind spoiler tags.

I found this book to be a huge improvement on its predecessor in nearly every way and on nearly every level. The plot was much more interesting and far meatier and just plain better than that of Shadow and Bone. We open with Alina and Mal across the sea in Cofton attempting to evade the Darkling by living there and blending in amongst the citizenry. In very short order, they're captured by the Darkling, knocked out and when they come to, they're on a ship that is sailing back to Ravka. Or so they think. It turns out that the Darkling is after another amplifier, a mythological sea dragon known as the Rusalye. They do indeed find it, as aided by Mal and that's when things go haywire. The ship is captained by none other than the notorious privateer of the description, Sturmhond. The Darkling has hired Sturmhond to pilot them to the True Sea and then back to Ravka. But Sturmhond has plans of his own. After they've captured the Rusalye, Sturmhond turns the tables on the Darkling and engineers a mutiny of sorts. Another ship, a schooner, joins the fray in the True Sea and it turns out to be Sturmhond's as well. Alina, Mal, Sturmhond and most of his crew manage to escape to the schooner. Oh, and Sturmhond's crew is stocked with rogue Grisha. And now it really is back to Ravka. After the dust has settled, Aline naturally wants to know what's going on and what possessed Sturmhond to do that?! As he explains to Alina, the problem with hiring a man who can be bought is that one can easily be outbid. He won't specify who outbid the Darkling, just says that someone did and he's taking Alina to that client. And back to Ravka they go. Along the way, Alina gets to know Sturmhond and his crew and starts to forge friendships with them. Sturmhond... Can we talk about Sturmhond for a moment? Okay? Yes. He was one of the utter highlights of the book for me! He added a desperately needed sense of fun and frivolity to the series and I loved his character! I'll be the first to admit that I tend to love characters like Sturmhond. That combination of witty, charismatic, sarcastic, flirtatious, charming, flippant, clever and funny is my YA boy kryptonite. But Sturmhond also has some hidden vulnerabilities and layers to him that made me love him even more. He blew Mal (whom I didn't find super exciting from the onset) out of the water. Sturmhond alone makes this book worth reading. Seriously. All right, I think I've fangirled over him enough, lol. They're almost back to Ravka, when, why not? A smaller ship draws up next to Sturmhond's schooner and they get on board and it turns out that ship can freaking fly! Annnnnd into the Shadow Fold they go and they're merrily hunting down volcra and all seems to be going fine until Alina sees the Darkling, she has a royal freakout and they crash land in Ravka. They're met by a group of First Army soldiers on shore and that's when Sturmhond's face changes, turns out he's got a Tailor as part of his crew because his face had heretofore been pretty ugly, now he's handsome. And it turns out that, oh, he's not just some crazy privateer after all. No, he's actually Nikolai Lantsov, second prince of Ravka! I really liked that twist a lot and I definitely did not see it coming. And the client Nikolai is supposedly taking her back to? Yeah, that client doesn't exist. He views her as being Ravka's only hope and he wants her to unite the First and Second Armies. She agrees as long as she can become commander of the Second Army. Nikolai agrees to her terms and back to Os Alta they go. Along the way, they stop in a lot of the towns and cities on the way to Os Alta to show the people that Alina is still alive after being presumed dead after the events of the previous book. They learn that quite the cult, lead by the Apparat, has sprung up around Alina, she is considered to be a Saint, and they quickly begin to attract a band of followers. They make it to Os Alta and they meet the king and after a bit of pomp and circumstance he agrees to make Alina commander of the Second Army. And after some initial hesitation and pushback, they start to come around to Alina and respect her as their leader. They're trying to shore up their defenses and prepare for the inevitable march of the Darkling and his army of Grisha and these shadow things called nichevo’ya that can wreak serious havoc. A lot of distance between Mal and Alina starts to spring up because he doesn't really like court life and thinks Alina is changing too much. This more or less culminates in her finding out that he's in this kind of Grisha fight club where he goes up against Grisha fighters, he wins and kisses Zoya, Alina's enemy of sorts. And Mal and Alina fight again. Yawn. Not too long after that, it's Nikolai's birthday party. Where his idiot older brother, Vasily, announces he's made a pact with the Fjerdans and in return for opening a few roads and some other stuff, they would support Ravka against the Darkling. Of course, the Fjerdans are allied with the Darkling and he now has a one way route to Os Alta. He breaches the city barely a few minutes after Vasily's announcement, storms the Little Palace, kills Vasily and a whole bunch of other people. Nikolai and what remains of the royal family escape to his flying ship and their fate is left up in the air. Alina and Mal make their way into a chapel where they intend to escape via a secret tunnel, but before they can do that, they are cornered by the Darkling. Alina feigns like she'll go with him to get him to leave her friends alone, they kiss to seal the deal, only she has figured out a way to tap into his own power and starts doing so and nearly kills the Darkling but also herself in the process. Mal yanks her away from him and down the tunnel they go. It turns out the tunnel leads into a vast underground network of passages and caverns. They end up meeting the Apparat yet again and he tells Alina that he hopes she can save them all. Only problem is that her powers seem to be gone. And... scene. After finding the first book to be good but so unspectacular, I was fairly blown away by this book. The plot was just excellent and I loved it! The characters improved a lot, Alina in particular changed a lot in this book and it was very enjoyable. Mal unfortunately is still a wet blanket and I find him to be uninspired as a love interest. Even though all signs point towards Alina ending up with Mal, I hope she doesn't. Mal is plain white bread to Nikolai's bursting with flavor gumbo. I think that Nikolai would be a far superior match for Alina. On the positive side, I did love the new characters Leigh introduced. In addition to Nikolai, she also introduced two twins, Tolya and Tamar who are both Grisha, Heartrenders, and are just all kinds of interesting and I really hope we learn more about them in Ruin and Rising. She did develop the Grisha's magic more and that was pretty darn cool. Now that all the groundwork has been laid in Shadow and Bone, that freed Leigh up immensely to really kick things into motion and start getting to the meat and gristle of her story and does she ever! This was just so darned good! I was reminded vaguely of Catching Fire, not plot wise in the least, but in that that book was the book that really kicked things into high gear and put the trilogy over the top, so to speak. And that's exactly what I felt this book did. And incidentally, Catching Fire is my favorite book in the Hunger Games trilogy. But I digress. I'm pretty impressed by how much Leigh seems to have grown as a writer between Shadow and Bone and this book. She really seemed to find her stride here. I'm pretty excited to see where it all goes in Ruin and Rising and I'm glad that I don't have to wait to read it. In conclusion, this is an extremely good book and as I stated at the beginning of this review, an improvement on its predecessor in nearly every way and if you didn't like the first book or found yourself "meh" on it, give this book a try and I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. ...more

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Oct 08, 2021 Allison Jenkins rated it liked it

Shelves: library

I had high hopes for this book as I was swept into narrative in just a matter of pages. Bardugo starts her sequel of Shadow and Bone off with a bang packed full of action, adventure, romance, and intrigue; she doesn't slow down until an unexpected reveal halfway through the novel and then - she slows down. She really slows down.
For nearly the entire second half of the story we forget all about the daring pirates, foreign lands, and mythical creatures that drummed up so much excitement while Ali ...more

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Jan 02, 2021 Nicole rated it it was ok

I hate to say I was bored by this book, but other than little spurts if action there wasn't much going on than angst and whining. ...more

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Aug 26, 2019 Tehreem rated it really liked it

It was a bit stretched out with all the events asked at the end of the book. Despite all that the story hasn't lost his momentum. I tried reading the red Queen series and after the second book I just gave up but I started this series after the six of crow which takes place in the similar word but has different characters. That combined with the new characters in this book doesn't let the story slow down to a complete stop. Definitely going to read the next book. ...more

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Apr 09, 2013 Tara rated it really liked it

Shelves: young-adult, own, series, 2013-favorites

At first I was not sure if I would like the latest installment of the story of Mal and Alina. I found that I became more sucked into the story as I read. Her prose is so beautiful and so is Mal and Alina's love. So much happened to tear them apart. The Darkling was as evil as ever. One new character that I found endearing was Strurmhond. I really loved Sturmhond and his gang of lovable and lethal shipmates. (view spoiler) ...more

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Jul 31, 2013 emily rated it liked it

Shelves: fantasy, magic-witches-occult, 2011-to-2015, adventure-action-survival, when-the-war-came

3.5 stars, rounded down for a few reasons. 1, I wanted it to be longer, or for its length to contain more Alina playing politics with Nikolai and less Alina angsting over Mal. 2, while the worldbuilding is still excellent, I didn't get enough of it and it wasn't as much fun of a read as the first one. I hate that I just don't care for Mal that much, bc the thing with him fighting Grisha was kinda cool (a cool image / scene, at least) and I get that he's plot important, but... idk, I wanted more ...more

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