Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

[Josh]

Shadow and Bone takes the reader to an intricate world of magic and adventure. Leigh Bardugo's first book in her fantasy series sets the stage for a young soldier, Alina, to learn that she is one of the most powerful magic summoners in the known world. This first book takes her across the beautifully crafted continent to meet some masterfully written characters along with some characters with little to no personality that were rushed into relationships without enough character development. The book's creation of the Grishverse world is done extraordinarily well, but the characters that Alina meets leave little to be desired. There are few twists and perils that live up to its category of adventure but most of the downtime between plot events is quite dull and predictable.
While writing this review before reading the rest of the series I am inclined to say it was not the best book I have ever read, but I was intrigued enough and invested enough to continue onto the next book in the series to find out what will happen next.