strange and random happenstance: Saints

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Wednesday, February 23, 2022

Book Review - Leigh Bardugo's King of Scars

King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Imprint
Publication Date: January 29th, 2019
Format: Hardcover, 528 Pages
Rating: ★★★
To Buy

Nikolai thought the darkness within him was gone like the Shadow Fold. But it has returned. When he falls asleep the monster awakens. He's been lucky so far in that those in his closest counsel have been able to locate and restrain him before he has done any real damage. No one has died. Yet. He is fearful that that day is quickly coming. But Ravka is his primary concern. The country is broke and war is looming. Again. Plus there are murmurs, rumors about saints and miracles. When Nikolai looks at a timeline of the so-called miracles he realizes that they started when the monster within awakened. This can't be a coincidence. What's more, the Darkling now has followers petitioning the crown to legitimize him as the Starless Saint. The eager monk Yuri brings evidence forward that all the miracles are converging on the very spot the Darkling died. Therefore that is where Nikolai must go. Taking Zoya, Tamar, and Tolya, they are ostensibly touring the miracle sites, but they are on a mission to purge Nikolai of his darkness. Something that seems possible according to ancient texts, but it must be kept a closely guarded secret. Ravka is weak and this will be an opportunity for their enemies to lash out. Which is why they have invited all their enemies to a giant party as a way for Nikolai to stabilize the country's finances through a political marriage. Something he does not want to do, but realizes must be done. The only problem is it looks like he's going to miss the biggest party of the year as he comes face to face with real saints. Can his friends and counselors keep the country going in his absence? Only time will tell. And one of his friends is far from home. Nina is undercover in Fjerda. She is rescuing persecuted Grisha and getting them to Ravka, for their own safety and also to help rebuild the Second Army after the bloodbath the Darkling unleashed on them. Only Nina's parem altered powers tap into a dark and dangerous game the Fjerdans are playing with their captured Grisha. They have long experimented on them but what Nina discovers changes everything. Including her own mission. Will her work be able to help Nikolai if he's lucky enough to survive the darkness? Who knows.

I won't say that King of Scars let me down, I feel about it the same way I felt about the Six of Crows duology when I first read it, I'll love it in time but on my first reading there were things that annoyed me. Things that I will now forever be forewarned about. I have to learn to embrace the new characters and the way the old characters have matured. When I first read Six of Crows the only two characters I felt a connection with were Nina and Matthias. Of course I love them all now, but for me Nina and Matthias's relationship makes a plot development in this book a bit of a sticking point for me. That point is Hanne. Leigh is setting up Hanne to be Nina's new love interest. OK, fine. I don't have a problem with this because Nina is young and I knew she'd eventually find love again. Here's the part I DO have a problem with, the eventually being so soon. This seems to diminish Nina and Matthias's love for each other. Here's Nina burying his corpse and oh look at that attractive young novitiate on a horse, I'm good to go! WHAT!?! NO! I know they are young, but does that mean their hearts heal that fast? This just took so much away from my enjoyment of the book that I can't even begin to say how much. Two books of Nina and Matthias fighting for their love and fighting against their love and it's just gone. I know some people will say that dragging his corpse around the countryside for a long time and then finally burying him is mourning followed by closure, but TOO DAMN SOON is all I have to say. I don't like unnecessary change. Like look at Nikolai, his personality change, from dashing rogue to haunted leader, while I didn't like it it made sense because he has changed from the darkness within and from the burdens placed on him. And as for that darkness...well...I really have a thing about vanquished enemies returning from the grave. It's a cop out. It doesn't matter how loved or loathed they were because it's just a stupid trope. I always think of the end scene in the Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Buffy vs. Dracula" where she just sticks around to repeatedly slay him quipping: "You think I don't watch your movies? You always come back." Yeah, stop coming back!

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Bardugo Bash, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy vs. Dracula, Dracula, Fjerda, Grisha, Grishaverse, Hanne, King of Scars, Leigh Bardugo, Matthias, Nikolai, Nina, Ravka, Saints, Six of Crows, Starless Saint, The Darkling

Friday, February 11, 2022

Book Review - Leigh Bardugo's The Lives of Saints

The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo
Published by: Imprint
Publication Date: October 6th, 2020
Format: Hardcover, 128 Pages
Rating: ★★★★★
To Buy

The Istorii Sankt'ya, The Lives of the Saints, is given to children in Ravka to learn about the saints. When Alina was given a copy by the Apparat she brushed it aside as something meant for children. Yet she soon comes to realize that this book full of short lives and brutal deaths might be the key to defeating the Darkling and that saints might be synonymous with Grisha. All the saints are enumerated here, even Alina herself. The tales told are miraculous. Some are self-sacrificing, some are misunderstandings, but each is illuminating. And each only has a small aspect of the truth. Because truth changes over time. Truth morphs and becomes something palatable. Something that can be understood versus the true magic of what was. So even if you think you know what happened, perhaps you don't know the whole truth. Sankta Lizabeta, she of the bees and the blood red roses, she who was killed for not protecting others, she might have a dark little secret that was later revealed...Sankt Juris slayed a dragon or did he? Did he and the dragon become something more? But perhaps the most surprising saint is the Starless Saint, for those who seek salvation in the dark. The Starless Saint is none other than the Darkling. Because while a villain to all logical thinking people to some he is a hero. He did just want to keep Ravka safe and make it a haven for Grisha. If he had to kill a fair amount of Grisha to accomplish his goal, his long life could perhaps excuse his lack of empathy. His lack of understanding that every single life matters not just the welfare of the greater good. But here he is, among the pages of a children's book, there to worship and build alters too, like all the rest. And who knows, in the end maybe some of them were just as misguided as the Darkling...

This companion book to Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse is obviously a bit of a cash grab. They had to produce the Istorii Sankt'ya for use on the Netflix show as it's so important to the plot and figured since they already had it made there had to be fans who would fork over good money for a copy. And they were right. Yet the whole commercial aspect of this book doesn't diminish the fact that it is a beautiful little volume that adds so much to your understanding of the universe Leigh Bardugo has created. We learn the stories of the saints who Inej named her knives after. We get to finally hold in our hand the painting of Ilya Morozova, Sankt Ilya in Chains, that fueled Alina's search for the third amplifier. And we get to see how Alina herself was immortalized in the pages of this book she clung to so feverishly. As she pointed out, all saints live brutal lives that end in death, but it's the ways in which Leigh changes her narrative for each saint that keeps the stories fresh. Sometimes we get a straightforward tale of what happened to them, and other times we get stories that are about the people who worshiped the saint and because of their devotion they were saved, hello Yuri! This second example is what Leigh does with Sankta Alina, therefore giving us a story that is new to our favorite heroine and saint. But this book is full of surprises. As Alina herself pointed out when she was researching Ilya Morozova, there are so many variations and iterations of tales out there that perhaps we've heard it before. And here there is one we have if you happened to have read The Language of Thorns. Sankta Ursula's tale is the tale of Ulla from "When Water Sang Fire" about the creation of the Broken Heart islands off the northern coast of Fjerda. This little callback was a wonderful parallel that shows how perfectly built Leigh's world is. Almost as perfectly built as the Ice Court...but that was a different saint altogether.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: Alina, Apparat, Bardugo Bash, Empathy, Grisha, Grishaverse, Istorii Sankt'ya, Leigh Bardugo, Morozova, Netflix, Ravka, Saints, The Darkling, The Language of Thorns, The Lives of the Saints, The Starless Saint, Ursula

Friday, February 4, 2022

Book Review - Leigh Bardugo's Ruin and Rising

Ruin and Rising 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 saintly 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 than a living one. 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 than 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 small misfit band of Grisha can survive and how they even became compatriots in the first place. With despair driving them more than 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 than she dares admit to anyone, even Mal. And what if victory is only possible by letting go of the only thing that matters to her?

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 comes very close to a perfect ending with a relentless pace maintained until the final pages of Ruin and Rising. I will just miss the Darkling horribly though. 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 here pining and 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.