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.

Siege and Storm - Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #2)

I wasn't super psyched about the first volume of the Grisha series, but I held out hope for the other volumes.  In this second book, Alina and Mal are fleeing Ravka and the Darkling--until they're not.  And soon, Alina finds herself with a second amplifier and hopes for a third, control of the Second Army, and no idea where the Darkling actually is, but a sense that all is not going to go well.

There's a split in my opinion on this book.  On one hand, there's definitely a case of second-book syndrome going on here.  Not a lot happens in it other than Mal and Alina fighting--and more on that later.  On the other hand, I felt like this book was a bit better than the first because the symbolism wasn't quite as heavy-handed and Bardugo didn't do as much to deliberately manipulate readers and without much art.  The "dark is bad, light is good" dynamic is still there, but because the Darkling isn't present on the page for most of the book, it's not played up as much.

Instead, the focus of this book is largely the relationship between Alina and Mal.  I'm not sure why this is a relationship that Bardugo continues to push, because it's clearly very toxic.  Mal can't accept that Alina has a moral compass that doesn't always align with personal desires (his or her own) but Alina clings to him and refuses to let go of some dream of them being together, because they've known each other their entire lives.  Note: knowing someone your entire life does not automatically make them a suitable romantic partner.  Alina pushes away another potential romantic interest who, though he has his own motivations, is probably also much better for her, just because she's so wrapped up in Mal, who is downright nasty to her for most of the book.

Bardugo did add in some interesting supporting characters in this book, mainly in the form of Sturmhond/Nikolai and his crew.  This is exactly the sort of dynamic that I think this book needed.  Nikolai is a very strong character and I hope we see more of him in the final book, though I suspect that it's going to be a lot of Mal and Alina on their own.  Seeing Grisha who weren't actually part of the Grisha hierarchy was also interesting, and made sense; after all, if Grisha are born in all nations in this world but are only welcomed in Ravka, it makes sense that not all of them would run away to join the Second Army.  I do wish we knew a bit more about this whole dynamic, because Ravka seems like such an isolated country and that's really not how countries work, but I guess that's not something Bardugo really plans on going into, at least not in this series.

So, yes--a stronger book than the second one, and it gives me hope for the third.

3.5 stars out of 5.

Shadow and Bone - Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #1)

Set in a Russian-inspired fantasy world, Shadow and Bone is the story of Alina, a young woman working as a cartographer in the army until, on a journey through the magically-dark-and-dangerous Fold (aka the Unsea) she shows off previously-unknown light powers and is swept off to be trained as a Sun Summoner and a savior of the people...falling into the grasp of the intriguing Darkling and leaving behind her best friend from childhood, Mal, in the process.  One of my friends loves this series, and Bardugo's associated duet that happens after these books (Six of Crows and its sequel) so I had this slated for one of my reading challenge categories for the year in order to finally get around to it.  Aaaaaand...?

Rage.  Ugh.  This started off with such promise.  "Who is the love interest here?" I demanded of said friend.  "I don't want to get my hopes up over nothing."  She refused to tell me.  "This book is going to crush me, isn't it?" I asked.  She liked my comment.  Because here's the thing...the Darkling is freakin' awesome and Mal is totally lame.

Yes.  I said it.  And coming off the high that was Uprooted just a little while ago, I was so looking forward to another magical-tutor-romance thing.  And for a while, it looked like I was going to get it!  I was intrigued.  The Darkling has, guess what, dark powers that compliment Alina's sun-summoning ones.  A light-mage/dark-mage pairing?  Okay, not the most original, but I thought there was promise there.  But as I read on, I started to get suspicious.  Mal wasn't responded to Alina's letters, for no apparent reason.  This clearly meant he wasn't getting them--they were being intercepted somewhere along the way.  And honestly, it just couldn't be that easy.  After all, there are three books in this series, and this is just the first.  I started to have a sneaking feeling that the Darkling was going to turn out to be a Big Bad and Mal was going to sweep back in and become the childhood-friend-turned-love-interest, which is a dynamic that I actually don't really like.  And if the Darkling became the Big Bad, it would mean that Bardugo was seemingly falling back on the tired, tired, tired trope of "light=good, dark=bad."  Which I really, really hoped wasn't going to happen, because I had such hopes here.

Overall, this was a book with a lot of potential.  It's a story with a lot of potential.  I have a bit of hope for it becoming fuller and more fleshed out in the next two books, which I definitely will read, but coming to the end of this one I find myself a tiny bit disappointed.  The writing is pretty clearly on the wall here, and I was feeling so miserable about it that I even went and read the jacket blurb of the third book.  I can already tell that I don't like where it's headed.  Sigh.  So much sadness here.

Another reviewer suggested that, if you liked where you thought this book was going but were disappointed in where it actually went, you should read Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses and its sequels.  I'm inclined to agree; while maybe not having the awesome Russian-fantasy-dynamic that the Grisha has (which is very cool and I'm so happy to see that authors are branching out into areas other than generic-medieval-England fantasy settings) it has the feel that I was actually looking for here.  I'd also recommend Uprooted.

So, yes, I will keep reading these books...but I'm going in steeled for the worst.

3 stars out of 5.