Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 3/5 cats
WHY DON’T I SEE WHAT YOU SEE???
okay, so let me just dash out this review quick and dirty-like, before i get too far away from my memory of this book, and because the plan is to start the second part of this tonight and i don’t want to get all muddled in my limited brain-space.
an unexpected three stars cats for this book. i mean, i had been hearing about this book here on gr since before it came out. great reviews like kat’s and jo’s and steph’s, and giselle’s, all of which put this book on my radar and made me buy it in hardcover pretty much as soon as it came out. and YES, it took me a long time to read it, just because – so many books – and because i had been sort of trying to stay away from YA series, but i still bought the other two as soon as they came out in hardcover (those COVERS!!), and i comforted myself with “well, now i won’t have to wait – i can read them all at once.” and once i discovered those tor shorts: The Too-Clever Fox, Little Knife, and The Witch of Duva, i was a goner. those stories are everything i want in my fantasy reading: they are lush and playful, dark and brutal, lyrical and unusual.
and then, this.
and this was fine. it was not irritating to me in the least – it was a perfectly serviceable fantasy story targeted at a young adult audience. it had the whole checklist of expected building blocks: young orphaned female protagonist with ordinary looks and middling talents, best friend of the opposite gender with romantic possibilities and yearning, fantasy elements in the form of different factions of powerful, beautiful people, powerful magical threat including wing’ed monsters, sudden reversal of fortune, realization of hidden depths and magical talents, ugly-duckling makeover, darkly sinister love interest, newfound badassery, discovery of secret conspiracy, reversal of fortune 2, violence, pursuit, action, ending that paves the way for sequel.
again, it is fine, it’s just completely unremarkable. nothing stood out to me as being a new spin on the fantasy genre or attempting to subvert any of my expectations. i did like how tiny alina is, because that was always my favorite thing about Divergent‘s tris – this itty bitty dervish of kickassery, and i loved the mirror-gloves, but overall there were no surprises or twists to make me sit up and take notice. and the writing had none of that dark fabulism that made me drool when i read those shorts which supposedly took place in the same world as this novel. i think that was my biggest disappointment. those stories were some of the finest writing i have come across, and this was just worker-bee prose without any sparkle.
but do i have a crush on the darkling?
well, duh. my appreciation of male beauty stalled at the “underfed goth” stage.
so, yeah – i will keep going with this series, because i figure at some point, bardugo’s gotta transition into the writer who came up with those shorts, right?? and that’s what i’m waiting for.
this one line gave me hope (and giggles): “Should not hit girl in face when she is going to party.”
