strange and random happenstance

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: September 29th, 2015
Format: Hardcover, 480 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

What if Grisha could be more powerful? Not to just have their powers amplified but to have them changed. Magnified to a degree that the world itself changes before their eyes and anything is possible. Of course, such a discovery would be desired by the wealthy and the powerful, and especially the military. Bo Yul-Bayur is a chemist who accidentally created Jurda Parem from the common stimulant Jurda. While fatal to Non-Grisha, to Grisha it does all this and more, including making the user an addict after one dose. Afraid of what he has created he attempts to seek asylum in Kerch but is captured by the Drüskelle and taken to the Fjerdan capital of Djerholm and imprisoned in the impenetrable Ice Court. Who knows what the Fjerdan's will do with this technology, seeing as they have been carrying out pogroms on the Grisha "Witches" for as long as anyone can remember. This is where Kaz Brekker comes in. Kaz is the lieutenant of The Dregs and is known as the man who gets things done. So when Mr. Jan Van Eck needs someone to break Bo Yul-Bayur out of the Ice Court he turns to Kaz with the offer of a lifetime. The score from this impossible heist could set him and his crew up for the rest of their lives.

Kaz recruits Inej, the "wraith", Jesper, a born sharpshooter, Wylan, for his demolition skills and the fact that if need be he is Van Eck's son and could be used as a hostage, and Nina, because she's a Grisha who is a Ravkan Heartrender. But more importantly, Nina has a connection to someone who intimately knows Kerch and the Ice Court, former Drüskelle Matthias Helvar. Matthias is in prison because of something Nina said and she's been trying to make it up to him ever since, and breaking him out of prison for a big payday should make them even. Of course their master plan involves sending themselves to prison in Kerch, but at least it will be a change of scene from Hellgate. The improbability and complexity of their plan could go wrong at a million different places, yet it doesn't take them long to be enjoying the hospitality of the Ice Court's prison. This band of thieves will do whatever it takes to get their payday, and whatever obstacles, even those of their own making, must be overcome. They are all good at thinking on their feet, they wouldn't have survived in Ketterdam with all the rival gangs and dangerous alleys if they weren't. But is the payout really worth the risks? And when all is said and done, will they get that payout?

When I finished the Grisha Trilogy I was bereft. I had come to know and love these characters so deeply that I just didn't want to let go. But I could also see that their story was told. It was over and that was that. The light at the end of the tunnel was that Leigh Bardugo was working on a new duology set in the Grishaverse called The Dregs. Eventually retitled Six of Crows with the most amazing cover art I'd seen in recent years I couldn't wait until this book was released and was giving anyone I knew who was lucky enough to get an ARC the side-eye for weeks. OK, months, but you get it, I know you do. I wanted to be back in that world. I didn't care if it was a new country or a new cast of characters, I just wanted more of this wondrous land. And yet, when the time came, I just wasn't swept away. I think of all my book blogging and reading buddies I was the only one who didn't hail it as the best book of last year. In fact, it was nowhere near my top ten. There's even a part of me, looking back, that wonders if three stars was generous. The worldbuilding was still there, and still perfect. Yes it's a little darker, but the void of The Darkling needed to be filled somehow. Yet I just couldn't connect. This heist I had been waiting so long for suddenly didn't seem worth the wait.

The initial problem I faced was there were too many characters given to us too soon. We have six main characters and all their baggage to deal with while certain elements of their backstories are drawn out to excruciating levels with us not finding out answers until the last few pages. To keep this in perspective, A Game of Thrones, the first book in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire, has only eight narrators in a behemoth book of teeny tiny print; and we're barely scratching the surface in that book. To expect THIS book to do more with less seems ludicrous. Also confusing. I need a little time to sink into the narrative of a book, have one character lead me into the world and acclimatise me to the environment before being smacked in the face with the whole gang. There's a reason Ocean's Eleven starts with just Danny Ocean and slowly introduces new characters in little vignettes before having the whole crew together. I think for a book SO like Ocean's Eleven: Ketterdam perhaps the basic framework of a heist film or book could have been better utilized. Instead of starting with the small heist at The Exchange start even smaller and then go bigger.

Yet for a book with six main characters I found one thing very very odd. The exclusion of Wylan Van Eck as a narrator. Six characters but only five POVs!?! That just doesn't add up. I mean yes, there are initially too many characters in this book until you finally get to know them, but then why eliminate a certain one? Why was Wylan left out? Yes, part of it could have been to do with the end twist, but, well, just don't have his POV near the end. Because eliminating him entirely versus just eliminating him for a section makes more sense. There's an imbalance in the book created by this omission. It seriously doesn't make sense to me that we never get Wylan's POV. Especially with his connection to the man who hired Kaz and the crew you'd think Wylan's input would be vital, but instead it's left to other characters to tell Wylan's story. Then there's the whole insulting aspect to this. Wylan is dyslectic and can't read or write. To not have his voice heard when he can't write his own story, WTH! It's just adding insult to injury. I can only hope that Wylan has a say in Crooked Kingdom, but I'm not really keeping my fingers crossed. Kaz's nemesis got a POV at the end of this book and still, no Wylan.

My main problem with the book though was the "problem" with the women. Some people might be saying, how can you have a problem with Inej and Nina when they kick ass and take names? My problem is rooted in the fact that once you look past all their strength their character arcs are oddly stereotypical. At times I thought I was having some sort of out of body experience where this book wasn't written by the writer of the Grisha series populated with strong women and a kick ass female in her own right, but a man who just wrote the typical subjugation line of women in science fiction and fantasy as sex objects and bargaining chips. Inej and Nina spend the entire book showing they are more than what Ketterdam tried to make them in the brothels. They are strong and fierce warriors with love in their hearts. And then all of a sudden they're dressing up as whores to sneak into the Ice Court and ending up as prisoners that only the big brave men can rescue. Excuse me? So all their growth, all their development was for naught? Because they just ended up back at the beginning, victims that need saving? This isn't a just fate for them. This is a cliched, hackneyed fate. They deserve better. I deserve better as a reader!

Though in the end I think the biggest letdown is that Six of Crows just shows us the futility of it all. From the very beginning Kaz's crew are given this impossible task, one at which they could fail at any second, but deep down you know they are going to succeed. But in succeeding they fail. And somehow I knew this. I just knew that they'd make it to the end and yet they'd fail. I don't know if it's all the heist movies I've watched over the years, but somehow I knew it would be like that bus dangling over the precipice at the end of The Italian Job, all that work wouldn't really be worth it in the end. We were left hanging, waiting for the second book. And yes, I'm going to read Crooked Kingdom, but I don't have the excitement anymore. I have a determined resignation. I have no hopes for this book, well, minor hopes that I have a feeling will be quashed quite quickly. Six of Crows was a disservice to the readers. We read a book whose narrative didn't matter. It was nulled and voided at the end and makes you wonder, why then did I bother to read it? Yes, we got to know these characters and to care for them, but it took a long time for that to happen and then it was like everything that had been built between the reader and the story was washed away. I also know that my voice is one small voice among the countless that are lauding this book. Yes, this is just my opinion, but I think a valid one. Leigh Bardugo created a world that I love and then diminished it.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: A Game of Thrones, A Song of Ice and Fire, Backlog Bonanza, Crooked Kingdom, Darkling, Dregs, Duology, Grisha, GRRM, Heist, Leigh Bardugo, Ocean's Eleven, POV, Six of Crows, Stereotype, The Italian Job, Worldbuilding

Siege and Storm (The Grisha Book 2) by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: June 4th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Alina and Mal barely escaped the Darkling in the fold of nothingness that divides Ravka. Alina wrested back control of her power from the Darkling, but not before a deadly price was paid. Hiding out half way around the world Alina is haunted by what happened and the choices she has made. Sickening, she longs to use her powers and the ill gotten amplifier, but it is too risky. She has turned her back on Ravka, hoping for a new life with Mal and that the rumors of the Darkling's continued existence are a lie. But they can not hide forever. The Darkling finds them across the true sea. He has plans for Alina and disturbing new powers of his own.

Instead of taking his captives back to Ravka, the Darkling takes them far north on the hunt for another creature out of fairy tale and myth. A second forbidden amplifier for Alina's powers. Though little does the Darkling know that there are other people who also have plans for Alina. Plans that she can't ignore. Alina can no longer turn her back on her country's suffering as the Grisha are ostracized and the country is divided. She agrees to return and lead the second army in the place of the Darkling with the sole purpose of his downfall. Yet are her new powers and believed divinity a match for the Darkling? Or does she need more power in order to succeed? Does she in fact desire more power?

In the battle of good versus evil there always comes a time when the wiser action is to run. To regroup and come back hopefully stronger then before. While necessary, this can sometimes lead to boring storytelling. The suffering, the privations, the hardships, the hope of news that perhaps the luck of the enemy is running out. These stories are never my favorite. The driving force is fear and it can therefore lead to too many tropes. After the epic showdown in the fold between Alina and the Darkling, I was sure that this book would follow this tried and tested path and be the bridge book till the final showdown. I was happily surprised.

By having the Darkling force them out of hiding almost immediately, the story opened up new vistas. Alina and Mal could go on the offensive while preparing a strong defense. Yet what I most loved was that the forces of light regrouped in Os Alta. I really wasn't ready to part with this courtly life. It was a Russian Fairy Tale Palace that housed Hogwarts. I was despondent that I wouldn't get to walk the corridors of the Little Palace once more, thankfully I was saved from mopery. I not only got an a-typical middle book, but one that delivered all I could hope for and a little more (*cough* pirates *cough*).

For all her avoidance of tropes, Bardugo isn't immune to them. Seriously, I want to know why when girls are the protagonists of books that they always have two boys vying for their attention? I mean seriously. It's not like this is a new trope, it's been around as long as storytelling has been, and you know what, it kind of gets on my nerves. Yes, there's an element of wish fulfilment here. Who doesn't want an escape, to sink into a book and become one with the heroine and be loved and lusted after from one and all? But there's this other, darker side to me that's saying, but is that realistic? Maybe we've been fed these fairy tales too long and need to break free.

Can't a girl just have one guy? One person to be true to? Or none at all? Especially since this is YA, aren't we just giving young girls unrealistic expectations of not just finding mister right, but having a mister wrong there too wanting you? Or maybe the bitter little cat lady is showing through my carefully constructed veneer and I should just embrace that Alina gets Nathan Fillion and Blake Ritson fighting over her. Oh, I've cast Nathan Fillion as Mal and Blake Ritson as the Darkling in my version of Siege and Storm, just FYI. I know you all want Blake Ritson as a bizarre apparition showing up in your bed chamber no matter how you fall on this trope...

Far from the tropes of men and women, Bardugo has tapped into the vein of Russian folktales and brought out what modernization and progress mean to our shared past. In Siege and Storm the words of the Darkling that the time of the Grisha is coming to a close is not only explored by expanded on. There is this interesting dynamic of past versus future, with the old ways dying off. The future doesn't belong to Tsar's and magic and fairy tales, but to iron and steel and guns. Yes, we see glimpses that perhaps, just maybe, there could be a world where they could coexist, feeding each other, but that seems like the true fairy tale.

Yet what strikes me most is that while Ravka might possibly be saved by these modern military advancements, their only true hope lies with Alina. Alina isn't a creature of the modern world, she is of the old world. She is of the time when maps still bared legends that said beyond here there be monsters. She thinks in fairy stories of the too too clever fox. The third amplifier she seeks is that of the fire bird, a creature of myth that isn't just in one or two stories, but in every story of Ravka. A fairy tale holds the key to the future, and that is a world that I want to live in. A world where stories are real.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blake Ritson, Darkling, Fairy Tales, Grisha Trilogy, Leigh Bardugo, Nathan Fillion, Os Alta, Pirates, Ravka, Russia, Saint, Siege and Storm, Summer Series

Ruin and Rising (The Grisha Book 3) by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: June 17th, 2014
Format: Hardcover, 432 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy (Different edition then one reviewed)

The Apparat's plan to win the war is to bide his time underground in his white cathedral with his disciples and rise victorious when all Alina's enemies have killed each other. While this kind of strategy has led to his long and successful career in the halls of Os Alta, Alina is going crazy underground as his prisoner. Her illness after the battle with the Darkling has left her sick and frail, but being so far away from the light she summons means she is unable to fully heal, unable to escape the Apparat and her growing fear that he might realize a dead saint is less work then a living saint. Luckily for Alina her fellow Grisha are concocting a plan to release her from this underground tomb and resume their hunt for the final amplifier in the hopes that then Alina will have the strength to defeat the Darkling.

Escaping though is the first and easiest step, and in truth, it wasn't easy at all. But working their way out of a labyrinth of underground caverns is quite easier then locating a rebel prince who has become a sky pirate employing guerrilla tactics or hunting down a mystical creature that may not even exist. All this just in the hopes that they might succeed. Yet with the Darkling striking out faster, sooner, and unexpectedly at every turn, Alina wonders how her misfit bad of Grisha can survive and how they even became compatriots in the first place. With despair driving them more then hope, Alina wants to be the light in the darkness but fears that her lust for power might make her more similar to the Darkling then she dares admit to anyone, even Mal.

A satisfying conclusion is the hardest thing to achieve. A delicate balance of all the possible outcomes while remaining true to the characters and giving the readers closure. Some might say it's impossible, others improbable, but Leigh Bardugo came very close to a perfect ending with non stop action and wit. Mal becoming even more Malcolm Reynolds as he paraphrases Nathan Fillion's character from the Firefly episode "The Message" to my delight. Though I do have issues with the improbability of the happily ever after, I still felt a satisfaction wash over me, with maybe a little eye rolling at the convenience of things. Yes, after a bleak tale almost everyone wants love to prevail, cue the happy welcome home to the Shire music and end credits, but there's me going, but can't it still be a little dark? Perhaps I should stop falling for the baddies and the rogues so that when they are vanquished or cast aside I won't be left there brokenhearted.

Yet my inability to stop falling for the bad guys was a foregone conclusion with the Darkling. What made Ruin and Rising so amazing and so fully rounded a book was the insight Bardugo gave us about him. Here we don't have just a mindless baddie whose sole goal is power and destruction. We don't have a cookie cutter villain with a goofy gimmick, like a bullseye iris (don't ask me why I'm thinking of Charles Dance in Last Action Hero, I honestly don't know). Bardugo gets that bad guys can't be all that bad, there has to be more. Here we have a multifaceted villain. He's not black like Spinal Tap none more black, he's black like an oil slick or the night sky, there's rainbows and depth, there's hints of blue that make the black blacker, but a splash of light every now and then. His back story is gut wrenching, especially if you read this edition with the prequel story "The Demon in the Wood." To the rest of the world he's this improbable being of such destructive force that he is terrifying, but to Alina, he's just a boy, like calling to like. What wouldn't we do if we spent lifetimes alone and persecuted? Your only wish to be loved and safe and have someone tenderly say your name. Your true name. To learn at the end that you are in fact truly alone, that would destroy anyone.

Aside from the whole wanting to go off with the Darkling, I also kind of really want to just move into the world of this book. Because I don't want this to be the end. I can't accept it for some reason and this has spurred me and my overactive brain on to start asking fifty million questions about the world Bardugo has built. I have so many thoughts on the worldbuilding that I can't sit still. I don't think it's a lack on Bardugo's part either as to insufficient information, but more my insatiable curiosity. Unless of course you have the same questions, then perhaps we all need to sit down with Leigh and work things out. The exception to this is the distances. I really don't think that Bardugo worked out her distances on her map very well. In the first book it took far longer to get anywhere, and as each book progressed it took less and less time to get from one place to another, yes, I know they had improved transport... but still, it's off. Make a key, stick to it, alright?

As for my other questions, I'd have to be like the Darkling and have a really long lifespan because, well, some things I want to know are past, some are present, and some are future, unless I had the ability to time travel, that would make this faster. Firstly I want to know if Morozova just created the applifiers or did he plan on using them. It seems like a lot of work to go around and make them and not use them. But if he used them, well, did they respawn on his death? But then they thought, maybe he didn't die, so then, well, it makes no sense. Though I really want to know more about the physics of the fold. So it's this big blackness dividing the country and it's the blackest black inside. Well, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, this is a north south divide. How is there dawn in West Ravka or a sunset in East Ravka? Just how? See, I just need more and more books in the world to work this all out once and for all. Leigh's got to get on this ASAP.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alina, Apparat, Charles Dance, Darkling, Firefly, Grisha, Grisha Trilogy, Last Action Hero, Leigh Bardugo, Mal, Nathan Fillion, Ravka, Ruin and Rising, Spinal Tap, The Fold

Siege and Storm (The Grisha Book 2) by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: June 4th, 2013
Format: Hardcover, 448 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

Alina and Mal barely escaped the Darkling in the fold of nothingness that divides Ravka. Alina wrested back control of her power from the Darkling, but not before a deadly price was paid. Hiding out half way around the world Alina is haunted by what happened and the choices she has made. Sickening, she longs to use her powers and the ill gotten amplifier, but it is too risky. She has turned her back on Ravka, hoping for a new life with Mal and that the rumors of the Darkling's continued existence are a lie. But they can not hide forever. The Darkling finds them across the true sea. He has plans for Alina and disturbing new powers of his own.

Instead of taking his captives back to Ravka, the Darkling takes them far north on the hunt for another creature out of fairy tale and myth. A second forbidden amplifier for Alina's powers. Though little does the Darkling know that there are other people who also have plans for Alina. Plans that she can't ignore. Alina can no longer turn her back on her country's suffering as the Grisha are ostracized and the country is divided. She agrees to return and lead the second army in the place of the Darkling with the sole purpose of his downfall. Yet are her new powers and believed divinity a match for the Darkling? Or does she need more power in order to succeed? Does she in fact desire more power?

In the battle of good versus evil there always comes a time when the wiser action is to run. To regroup and come back hopefully stronger then before. While necessary, this can sometimes lead to boring storytelling. The suffering, the privations, the hardships, the hope of news that perhaps the luck of the enemy is running out. These stories are never my favorite. The driving force is fear and it can therefore lead to too many tropes. After the epic showdown in the fold between Alina and the Darkling, I was sure that this book would follow this tried and tested path and be the bridge book till the final showdown. I was happily surprised.

By having the Darkling force them out of hiding almost immediately, the story opened up new vistas. Alina and Mal could go on the offensive while preparing a strong defense. Yet what I most loved was that the forces of light regrouped in Os Alta. I really wasn't ready to part with this courtly life. It was a Russian Fairy Tale Palace that housed Hogwarts. I was despondent that I wouldn't get to walk the corridors of the Little Palace once more, thankfully I was saved from mopery. I not only got an a-typical middle book, but one that delivered all I could hope for and a little more (*cough* pirates *cough*).

For all her avoidance of tropes, Bardugo isn't immune to them. Seriously, I want to know why when girls are the protagonists of books that they always have two boys vying for their attention? I mean seriously. It's not like this is a new trope, it's been around as long as storytelling has been, and you know what, it kind of gets on my nerves. Yes, there's an element of wish fulfilment here. Who doesn't want an escape, to sink into a book and become one with the heroine and be loved and lusted after from one and all? But there's this other, darker side to me that's saying, but is that realistic? Maybe we've been fed these fairy tales too long and need to break free.

Can't a girl just have one guy? One person to be true to? Or none at all? Especially since this is YA, aren't we just giving young girls unrealistic expectations of not just finding mister right, but having a mister wrong there too wanting you? Or maybe the bitter little cat lady is showing through my carefully constructed veneer and I should just embrace that Alina gets Nathan Fillion and Blake Ritson fighting over her. Oh, I've cast Nathan Fillion as Mal and Blake Ritson as the Darkling in my version of Siege and Storm, just FYI. I know you all want Blake Ritson as a bizarre apparition showing up in your bed chamber no matter how you fall on this trope...

Far from the tropes of men and women, Bardugo has tapped into the vein of Russian folktales and brought out what modernization and progress mean to our shared past. In Siege and Storm the words of the Darkling that the time of the Grisha is coming to a close is not only explored by expanded on. There is this interesting dynamic of past versus future, with the old ways dying off. The future doesn't belong to Tsar's and magic and fairy tales, but to iron and steel and guns. Yes, we see glimpses that perhaps, just maybe, there could be a world where they could coexist, feeding each other, but that seems like the true fairy tale.

Yet what strikes me most is that while Ravka might possibly be saved by these modern military advancements, their only true hope lies with Alina. Alina isn't a creature of the modern world, she is of the old world. She is of the time when maps still bared legends that said beyond here there be monsters. She thinks in fairy stories of the too too clever fox. The third amplifier she seeks is that of the fire bird, a creature of myth that isn't just in one or two stories, but in every story of Ravka. A fairy tale holds the key to the future, and that is a world that I want to live in. A world where stories are real.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Blake Ritson, Darkling, Fairy Tales, Grisha Trilogy, Leigh Bardugo, Nathan Fillion, Os Alta, Pirates, Ravka, Russia, Saint, Siege and Storm, Summer Series

Shadow and Bone (The Grisha Book 1) by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Henry Holt and Co.
Publication Date: June 5th, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 368 Pages
Rating: ★★★★
To Buy

Alina and Mal only have each other. Orphaned in the wars they grew up looking to each other for everything. Now they are in the first army together, Mal's a tracker and Alina's a cartographer. But little does Mal know Alina's true feelings for him. The way her heart thumps when he's near or how she worries that they might be parted. Their parting is near at hand. The land of Ravka is divided by a darkness, a nothing. The capital is cut off from the ports and the country has been vulnerable for hundreds of years while creatures roam the blackness killing those who try to cross. Mal and Alina are about to attempt the crossing with their units; only everything goes wrong. The evil creatures with their blind eyes attack and it looks as if they are both going to die, but then a light as bright as the sun shines out and cuts the creatures down. Little does Alina realize that the light emanated from her.

Being called before the leader of the second army, the Darkling, Alina thinks that for some reason she is in trouble, but doesn't know why she is brought before the Grisha. The Grisha are masters of the small science, innate abilities in them that classify them as Corporalki, Etheralki, or Materialki, with powers ranging from stopping a human heart to metallurgy. Summoning the Sun means that Alina is a Etheralki who somehow avoided detection. Finding out that she isn't in trouble but is in fact what their country has been praying for since the arrival of this dark rift puts pressure beyond measure on Alina. Not only is she trying to forget being separated from Mal, but dealing with the cosseted little world of backbiting Grishas, all while she's trying come to gripes with a power she never knew she had and hoping that it's all a big mistake or joke. Yet what if the Darkling has a different purpose in mind for Alina's powers the banishing the darkness? Will she be able to withstand his magnetism and the allure of life at court?

I remember reading a review about Shadow and Bone wherein they said it was dark, Russian, and left a vivid impression on me of a girl wandering a desolate landscape of evil shadows. Now that I've read the book I wonder if the reviewer had actually bothered to pick it up because this isn't some Russian Dorthy Gale lost in the wilderness, but the reviewer I guess could be said to have done their job because it did make me pick it up. And you know what? I wasn't disappointed that the only thing the reviewer really got right was the Russian and the darkness because it was a fun fast read. There's nothing overly original or revolutionary in this book, it is too obviously like other books then like itself to be called first rate literature. The plot set up is typical YA in structure, outcast has an ability they never knew they had and can save everyone... sounds familiar right? It's Tamora Pierce meets Buffy meets Harry Potter meets The Hunger Games meets The Neverending Story meets on and on and on. But somehow Bardugo makes it work more for her then against her. Even if Mal is too obviously Nathan Fillion in Firefly, name and all, it just works. Plus, I've a habit of wanting Nathan Fillion in all my books, so here I didn't even have to make an effort!

The real reason this book works more then it fails is that it was fun having a different setting then usual. YA literature tends to break down into a few distinct categories; post apocalyptic society, fairy tale re-tellings, or fantasy world. You rarely get to see re-imagings of past time periods but with fantastical elements, their are of course exceptions to this rule like Robin LaFevers' His Fair Assassin Series, but Russia, Russia is rarely tackled. Yet, with all things there are the parts that work and the parts that don't. I was enthralled with the court life and how Bardugo took a simple coat and was able to hint at the culture, but also was able to break down that culture with the use of colors and the distinctions in the threading. It was the little things, the details that she got just right. But she also got some big things quite wrong. Sometimes the place names or wordings, well, it was kind of overly kitschy or bang your head dumb. Kind of a when in doubt add a "ki" or a "nik" to the end of the word worldbuilding. No, I'm sorry, that doesn't make it Russian. Also Tsibeya for Siberia... not really feeling that. Funny spellings, no. The worst is Fjerda, which I'm taking to be Norway, because of the Fjords that the country is noted for. The problem I have with this is every time I see the word Fjerda or Fjerdian, the way it sounds in my head is like the Swedish Chef trying to talk, so it's the land of Børk Børk Børk.

But it's the subtler undertones of Mother Russia that coheres the book versus the more absurd elements (Børk). The mirroring of the political situation of Russia at the beginning of the last century was spot on. Strip out all the Grishas and the magic, take out an evil nothing and what have we got? We have a country with a widening gap between the haves and the have nots. The King is just a figurehead that no one respects and has a mysterious religious leader as counsel. The power of the country resides in the army and out of this a megalomaniac leader will take the country's reigns for his own will. So the Darkling is Stalin or Lenin, with the Apparat as Rasputin. I would not be the least bit surprised to see the Tsar and his family hurried into a cellar in the next book so that they can never be a threat to the Darkling ever again. Yet by seeing this through a filter of fiction and fantasy it somehow makes it more real then less real. When we travel with Alina from her life of drudgery in the army to her life of splendor in the Little Palace, we get to see in stark relief the widening gap between the haves and the have nots. Sometimes it takes another medium to filter events for us to get at the truth of something, and that is what Leigh Bardugo has done in Shadow and Bone. It might not be perfect, but it is memorable and echoes down the ages to our shared history.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments  

Labels: Alina, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Darkling, Firefly, Grisha Trilogy, Harry Potter, Leigh Bardugo, Nathan Fillion, Ravka, Robin LaFevers, Russia, Shadow and Bone, Swedish Chef, The Hunger Games, The Neverending Story