Ruin and Rising - Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #3)

For the final volume of this series, I was hoping for something dazzling.  I found the series had gotten off to a lackluster start, and while the second book was stronger, it still wasn't what I'd been hoping for.  However, it left off in a promising place, and this book picks up shortly after.

Alina and the other survivors of the Darkling's attack on the Little Palace are sheltering in the underground White Cathedral with the Apparat, but they're more like prisoners than anything else.  Alina is wilting without access to the sun and her light powers, and she seems to have picked up a little bit of shadow power, as well, from her near-death encounter with the Darkling.  They need to escape, find the firebird that is the third amplifier Alina hopes will help defeat the Darkling, and then actually defeat him.

Again, this book is very surface-level with few characters or components with any depth.  Light is good.  Dark is evil.  Alina admits, eventually, that the Darkling loved Ravka and did what he thought was best for it, even if it sometimes had terrible consequences, but that's about as close as Bardugo gets to layering in complexity in this book.  She tries to integrate a quirk involving the firebird as the third amplifier, but I found that scattered and not entirely convincing, as if Bardugo had a different plan for this book and then, in the middle of writing it, decided to go in a different direction--but didn't make the rest of the book or the series match up to that new direction.  It also felt like a ploy to pull on the hearstrings of readers, but honestly, I couldn't bring myself to really care that much about it.  That's because Mal is involved (of course) and I've always found him to be an utterly bland character.

The most interesting parts of this book were 1) Baghra and the revelations regarding her, the Darkling, and the amplifiers, and 2) Nikolai.  Nikolai was awesome.  Bardugo clearly had to sideline him for so much of the book because he was too busy stealing the scenes from everyone else he interacted with, being so superior to every other character in every way.  The Spinning Wheel was also an awesome location, but that was tied up with Nikolai's character, so I count it in with him.

Ultimately, this was an okay book, but it just didn't have heart.  The ending was predictable and nonsensical at the same time--no one ever realizes who Alina is?  Really?  I find that unlikely.  Characters who were less than engaging took up most of the book, and there was a lack of depth on any facet that left me wanting more.  This was Bardugo's first trilogy, and she has another duology set in this world that I'm still willing to try in hopes that it shows some evolution in her work, but I'm going to have my hopes set lower from the beginning based on my experiences with this trilogy.

2 stars out of 5.