Book Thoughts: Siege and Storm

Title: Siege and Storm
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Series: Grisha #2
Beware spoilers for Shadow and Bone!

I found this one a little harder to get into than the first and I think I liked the first one more, but this is still an excellent book.

I really enjoy Leigh Bardugo's world-building, and I just LOVE the way she writes characters. Alina and Mal's relationship is beautiful and heartbreaking as it develops over their return to Os Alta, and Alina's hesitant friendship with Nikolai is one of my favorite things about this book (Nikolai, actually, is probably my favorite thing about this book. Love him). Even the minor characters worm their way into your heart, which makes the realities of war, unflinchingly addressed, that much more painful and honest.

I also really enjoyed watching Alina's struggle to come to terms with her power and become who she is meant to be. I love love love the story this series is telling and the characters it's telling it with, and I cannot WAIT for Ruin and Rising next spring.

Book Thoughts: Shadow and Bone

Title: Shadow and Bone
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Series: Grisha #1

After the first chapter of this one, I was reeling trying to keep track of all of the Russian-influenced words and place names. I’ll give it one more chapter, I told myself, and then I will put it down for the night.

The next time I bothered to check anything, I was several chapters and 53 pages into the book. I just had to know what would happen to Alina, what the Darkling’s secrets were, and whether they really could brave the Shadow Fold.

Leigh Bardugo creates in this series a fascinating world, obviously influenced by Russia but something entirely its own. And the Grisha are just a fantastic new twist on elemental magic. I thought I was going to be super confused trying to keep the details straight, but the writing makes it actually very easy to keep up. The story is unabashedly honest, dark, and twisty — and also beautiful. I put it down only to sleep. After the first chapter, I didn’t think I was going to like it, but keep going, because by the end of the book? I was turning pages hungrily and waiting desperately for the sequel.