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Mon, August 6, 2012

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo Review

Shadow and Bone
By Leigh Bardugo
Publication date: June 5, 2012
Henry Holt and Co., 358 pages
Source: Purchased for my Kindle

Alina Starkov doesn’t expect much from life. Orphaned by the Border Wars, the one thing she could rely on was her best friend and fellow refugee, Mal. And lately not even that seems certain. Drafted into the army of their war-torn homeland, they’re sent on a dangerous mission into the Fold, a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters who feast on human flesh.

When their convoy is attacked, all seems lost until Alina reveals a dormant power that not even she knew existed. Ripped from everything she knows, she is whisked away to the royal court to be trained as a member of the Grisha, the magical elite led by the mysterious Darkling. He believes she is the answer the people have been waiting for: the one person with the power to destroy the Fold.

Swept up in a world of luxury and illusion, envied as the Darkling’s favorite, Alina struggles to fit into her new life without Mal by her side. But as the threat to the kingdom mounts, Alina uncovers a secret that sets her on a collision course with the most powerful forces in the kingdom. Now only her past can save her . . . and only she can save the future.

— Goodreads.com description

I find magic books so appealing, and Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo is no exception.

There’s a war between good and evil — a must for magic books — and I love how delightfully precarious the line between the two sides is in this book. Plus, each page filled me with the sense that anything could happen. So magical!

Did I love it as much as the friends who recommended it to me? Probably not, but I still enjoyed it through and through. The Russian-esque setting and the slang words used got me a little too confuzzled to love it as much as I wanted. I just couldn’t keep up with it!

Still, the plot is full of exciting twists, and the setting is plush and vivid. And the romance. Gah. I’m so horribly torn. I’m sort of rooting for the bad boy, y’all. Can’t wait to see what happens next!