Shadow and Bone Trilogy Review, Part One: Shadow and Bone
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Content Warning
Introduction
I'll start by saying that (and while this is rare for me to feel this way) I believe the first book in the Shadow and Bone trilogy was actually my least favorite in the series! And that's not to say that I didn't enjoy it, it just means that I think the series improved as it continued. Usually, the first book in a series always ends up being my favorite, as I think the quality of many stories tends to go down the longer that it is prolonged. However, Shadow and Bone is the exception! The story and its characters actually grow much stronger as the story progresses.
Summary & Review
Starting with aspects of the story that I liked, a highlight for me was definitely learning about the grisha themselves. Sometimes they reminded me a bit of the benders from Avatar: The Last Airbender (which I loved, so that's not an insult!) It was interesting to see Bardugo depict a group of people who were both a prosecuted minority in certain parts of the world she developed, but who still carried a lot of privilege in Ravka.
I also love that aspect of The Darkling's character as well. I've seen many fans of the series argue about whether or not The Darkling is a morally gray anti-hero, or if he's a straight-up villain who just happens to have a tragic backstory. While I would argue it's the latter, I think that's part of what makes him such an interesting antagonist is because his morality isn't so black-and-white. Yes, he made a sanctuary for his people so they wouldn't be prosecuted, and that's good. But he's also enslaved the powers of a young girl without her consent for the purpose of threatening and sewing fear into Ravka's enemies, and that's pretty bad. All of that is why The Darkling is such a compelling character.
What Bardugo managed to do with Alina and The Darkling's relationship is something that I like a lot too. I've read from several various sources that Bardugo based their relationship off of a real-life abusive relationship that she was in. Bardugo, then, had a really great opportunity with the story she created to make an impact with that premise. Shadow and Bone is a young adult series, and so its target audience is going to primarily be adolescents. A problem that I, personally, have with many YA works is that the romances are often very toxic and even borderline abusive, but they aren't always addressed as being toxic, and instead they're romanticized. When books are aimed at a younger audience, I think it's even more important to be careful with the way domestic and romantic relationships are portrayed. Younger readers will often be experiencing their first romantic relationships and might not necessarily know the warning signs of when one becomes toxic. When abusive patterns are depicted in fiction and they aren't specifically shown to be a bad thing, then a young reader might assume these behaviors are normal--especially when they're being romanticized for the sake of a more dramatic story. However, I think Bardugo steps clear of this pitfall when writing about "Darklina."
Alina and The Darkling's relationship starts off pretty much on par with most other YA-fantasy romances. She's different and he accepts her for who she is. There are some cute moments of horseback riding and light shows. It's all very heartwarming until it takes a turn, and the reader learns that The Darkling is actually a centuries-old man who is taking advantage of a seventeen-year-old Alina to manipulate her power for his own gain. Bardugo isn't actually trying to romanticize a relationship between an adult man and a teenage girl here, like some other fantasy authors (looks aggressively at Stephanie Meyer). It's problematic because it's supposed to be, just as the rest of their relationship is. Bardugo took the stereotypical toxic fantasy relationship and twisted it, so that her readers could all see how problematic they really are.
The best part of the deconstruction of "Darklina" isn't just its acknowledgment of abusive relationships. It's in the metaphorical value, and what it represents for survivors of abuse. As I expected while I was reading this book, The Darkling, of course, succeeds in his plan to manipulate Alina's power to his own gain and uses it to expand The Shadow Fold--not to mention killing a lot of people in the process. The true beauty of all this, though, comes from what happens next. Alina manages to take control of her own power back from The Darkling, uses it to protect herself, and to make it out of The Fold alive--to safety, away from him. This is such an important message for all of Shadow and Bone's readers, but especially for the young ones. Alina's reclaiming of her own power plays into the metaphor of her imbalanced relationship with The Darkling, because it gives a strong message of hope. Alina can take control of her power back from The Darkling; a survivor can take back power in their life from an abuser. Alina doesn't need to be saved; she saves herself.
Obviously, the symbolism of this isn't original--Alina summons light and represents hope; The Darkling summons darkness and plays the villain. This whole dark-and-light play has been done both in the fantasy genre and outside it countless times. It's nothing new. I'm willing to forgive it, though, because of everything else that the power-play between Alina and The Darkling represents. And it's a young adult series, so some cliches are perhaps to be expected.
One major criticism of the novel I have as a whole is its pacing. We jump straight into the plot by following Alina into The Shadow Fold right from the start without spending much time getting to know the characters and world-building first. In fact, if I hadn't read the little insert page in the front of the start of the story that explained the orders of the grisha first, I don't think I would have understood them as well. If the novel had stayed this fast-paced from start to finish, I might have been able to forgive its rather abrupt beginning. That isn't the case though. We spend a lot of time around the Little Palace just meeting various grisha and expositing about the Grishaverse without any major plot points happening. A lot of characters are introduced, some of whom I really love (Genya and Baghra, specifically), but it feels like most of the story's advancement doesn't occur until we finally get to the Winter Fete. You know, that infamous chapter where the reader learns that The Darkling is the Black Heretic who created the Shadow Fold. I liked this revelation, but I really wish some of the earlier chapters would have foreshadowed this more, so it felt like they had more of a pay off.
The world-building as a whole also could have been better. Not that anything Bardugo had already was bad--I liked the ideas very much--I just think it could have been so much better if she would have expanded on everything more. The grisha themselves were good, but what about the world conflicts? Ravka is at war with Fjerda, but we aren't really given a lot of information as to what led to this conflict in the first place. We aren't given much information on the religion of the Saints that the Ravkans worship either. These are points that Bardugo tries to expound upon later in her King of Scars duology, but by that point, it feels a little late in the game. A lot of this information would have benefited the reader more to have in the original trilogy first.
Another major sticking point for me has to do with the concept of the amplifiers and with Morozova's amplifiers specifically. It seems like the next two books in the trilogy do a better job explaining what they are and how they work, and just like with the Fjerdan war, Bardugo tries to expand this lore further in King of Scars. We get some brief explanations in the first book about Morozova's stag leading up to Mal and Alina tracking it down, but it feels like a lot of the tensions and build-up is lost because its mythological lore is explored more fully after they have already found it and it's killed. This whole moment where Alina feels too emotionally connected to the stag to kill it, allowing The Darkling to get to it instead, could have been so much more powerful if the stag had just been hyped up a bit more. I mean, we get several chapters in the beginning of the novel dedicated to a Mean Girls feud between Alina and Zoya, but we couldn't have sacrificed any of that to explore the stag that is the literal epicenter of this novel's plot a bit more?
I do also have to criticize the relationship between Mal and Alina a bit. I think Bardugo improves the way she characterizes them later, but in the first book of the trilogy, their relationship falls a bit flat. We're told right from the start (literally, the first chapter or so) that Alina has secretly been in love with Mal for a long time, so there really isn't any building tension leading up to a romance between them. It violates the golden rule in writing of Show-Don't-Tell. Bardugo is laying it out for us from chapter one that "Malina" is going to be endgame. I knew it before I even got halfway through the book.
Mal himself also isn't really present much in the first book, until the very end. Personally, I find it a bit difficult to root for two characters to end up together when I barely know one of them. There's also the matter that, with the way Bardugo writes them, it seems that their devotion to each other is hindering Alina, not uplifting her. She subdued her grisha powers to stay with Mal. When Mal found out she was alive and safe at the Little Palace, instead of being relieved, he could only be jealous that she had grown close to the Darkling, when he literally never looked twice at her before! Had Bardugo given Mal some seriously well-done character development and matured him, made him a good match for Alina, I would probably like "Malina" more, but unfortunately, it doesn't ever seem to happen.
This is perhaps why so many fans prefer "Darklina." Personally, I can't really ship that either because of how toxic and manipulative the relationship is. I will relent that, before everything happens at the Winter Fete, the writing and build-up of Alina and The Darkling's relationship is done so much better than her relationship with Mal. Aside from the whole light-and-dark analogy that comes with them, there's also the fact that he was more accepting of her powers and sought to help her learn them. He embraced the aspects of Alina that subconsciously she allowed her attachment to Mal to repress. Would Shadow and Bone be a better story if it had been about Alina learning to let go of Mal, falling in love with The Darkling, and they correct the mistake that he made centuries ago by destroying The Fold and allowing The Darkling to redeem himself in the process? Maybe. But that's not the story that Bardugo wrote.
The Netflix adaptation of Shadow and Bone improves this aspect of the story ever so slightly for me. Mal is promoted to being a more central character, so we get more of his emotional development. The show also removes the infamous scene where he gets angry at Alina for being with The Darkling at the Winter Fete. This is probably for the best, given that we know they end up together, so the show is trying to help their romance a bit.
Something else the Netflix adaptation improved was in casting Alina to be half Shu (Asian, in the non-Grishaverse). In the novels, Alina is frequently described as being insecure about her appearance and finding herself plain looking, which is fairly stereotypical for a teenage, female protagonist. However, the show reimagines this as having Alina's internal struggle over her appearance stem from racism she experienced from her peers. She also isn't ashamed of her appearance, but rather indignant about people who make fun of her. Not only does this add more diversity to the cast, but it gives a deeper insecurity for Alina to have, which also reflects discrimination in the real world.
Final Thoughts
Overall, I would give the first Shadow and Bone book a 3 out of 5 stars. It was a quick and fun read that introduced an interesting, if not fully developed, fantasy world chock-full of fun characters. The romances may have fallen a bit flat, but I liked the ending and what it meant for the direction the story would go in the following installments.
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