Processing the Shadow and Bone Trilogy

And we’re back with another Royal Teatime feature! I’ll admit that I did not plan this post at all. It was not on my blog calendar. But I recently finished the Shadow and Bone Trilogy since I wanted to read it before watching the show. I had so many conflicting thoughts while reading the books that I had to share them. I thought of doing a book review, but I wanted to cover all three books; I also wanted to focus on Alina Starkov and her relationships in particular. So, without further ado, let’s dive in!

The first I’d like to get out there is that I overall enjoyed the books. Shadow and Bone was my favorite of the trilogy, but I still liked the following two books and the series as a whole. Alina Starkov is one of my new favorite fictional characters; I would die for her. I also adore Nikolai Lantsov, and I’m excited to getting around to reading his duology.

I rated Shadow and Bone 4.5 stars—I had almost no complaints. I was pretty much on the edge of my seat from start to finish. I did not want to rate it five stars because I had heard it goes downhill from here. I discovered that while the statement is not entirely true, it is not false, either. Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising were not as good, especially the latter.

Siege and Storm started strong. We dove quickly into the action, but I didn’t mind. We met Nikolai Lantsov, otherwise known as the only blonde king I would die for without hesitating. But after we meet him, I find that the narrative arrives at a standstill. The rest of the book is essentially preparing for battle while Alina and Mal go in circles around each other. But the final battle was worth waiting for since it was thrilling and made me super excited for book three. So, despite my issues, Siege and Storm was still a good book. The exciting beginning and the end made up for the slow middle.

Then, there’s the conclusion, Ruin and Rising. This book had so much potential and missed the mark at so many points. Not because it dragged, but because of how the characters progressed throughout the book. I will explain more as I talk about Alina Starkov and her relationships.

Alina Starkov is hands down my favorite character of this trilogy. I love how far she has come, and I love how she is morally gray. Alina is the Sun Summoner, a person who should embody pure light and goodness, but she grapples with a darker side of her, a side that craves power. I find it is scarce to have a main character with a moral compass that does not always point north. I am so grateful that Leigh Bardugo brought her to life and told her story.

The relationships Alina develops significantly impact her character throughout the series. More specifically, her relationships with Mal and The Darkling strike me because of how they shape her. Mal had been her longest friend since childhood. She was always there for him—Alina loved him so much that she repressed her powers, which made her sick. I think Mal outgrew their friendship before Alina did. Before she discovered she was Grisha, Mal seemed closer with Mikhael and Dubrov. He would rather spend time with other girls and doing his own thing. It doesn’t make him a terrible person, just not a good friend. But for Alina, Mal was her entire world. She would do anything for him and clung to their friendship far more than he did. Alina even discovered she was Grisha because she wanted to save Mal from the volcra.

Mal flip flops once Alina moves to the Little Palace and creates a new life for herself. All of a sudden, he has been in love with her the entire time. It seems that he cannot stand to see her thrive, but Alina had also outgrown their friendship by this point. Before being Grisha, Alina only loved Mal. After a lot of hard work, she blooms as the Sun Summoner and as a Grisha in the Second Army. For the first time, Alina feels like she belongs, and people value her. In that sense, I think Mal is an important wake-up call—she cannot hold on to someone who does not care for her half as much as she cares for him. She threw her life away for Mal, and it was time to start pursuing her own dreams. Toward the end of Shadow and Bone, Alina doubles back and realizes she was still in love with Mal. However, it seemed that it was out of nostalgia and finally getting what she wanted for so long.

But Alina never stops being Grisha, or the Sun Summoner, which creates tension between her and Mal. In the second book, Mal is still essential to Alina’s development because she realizes that love is not always enough. Even though they love each other, Mal wanted the Alina before she discovered she was Grisha. Alina wanted Mal to accept her for who she was, which includes her powers. She wanted to lead the Second Army and fight for Ravka, while Mal wanted a peaceful life on the down-low. They were fundamentally different people who wanted different things. If they remained together, they would grow to resent each other and ultimately destroy their relationship. Their dynamic changes drastically in Ruin and Rising, but I’ll get to that later. My point is, although I’m not a big fan of Mal, he is undoubtedly critical to Alina’s development. He pushes Alina to come out of her shell because she realized he was holding her back. Alina realized what she truly wanted because of how their relationship progressed throughout Siege and Storm and even Ruin and Rising to some degree. Alina loved Mal and cherished their relationship, but the first two books depicted different characters with different wants and needs. Mal may have acted like a bad friend, but he ended up having a positive influence on Alina, driving her toward her goals and dreams. Before I continue, I’d like to say that I am explicitly talking about Mal in the books; not the show. He is an entirely different person in the show, so my thoughts do not apply in that case.

Then there’s The Darkling, the leader of the Second Army and second-in-command of Ravka, just under the King. For hundreds of years, he had been waiting for the Sun Summoner. Later, we find out his reasons for waiting were manipulative and devious. He seemed to genuinely believe in Alina, which is why my heart broke when we discovered that he was manipulating her for his own means. However, I think The Darkling developed legitimate feelings for Alina. The narrative demonstrated time and again that he hadn’t expected that would happen. He begs Alina to let him die in her arms with his name on her lips and burn his body afterward. He may have craved power the most, but that he still had feelings for her. All that being said, it doesn’t excuse his treatment of her. The Darkling may have started developing feelings for Alina, but he didn’t truly care about her. If he did, he wouldn’t have collared her against her will, manipulate her, or deceive her. He would have considered her wellbeing before his plans. Ultimately, he only cared about gaining absolute power and taking control of Ravka.

Once Alina and The Darkling become enemies and start fighting each other, The Darkling affects Alina differently. He makes her fight for a better Ravka—so much so that she developed a vision of how Grisha and Otkazat’sya could live together peacefully. Alina becomes determined to be the Sun Summoner on her own terms, and she learns what it means to be Grisha because of her rivalry with The Darkling. He broke her heart when Baghra told her the truth. We discover in Ruin and Rising that she was more upset about his lies rather than the innocent civilians he murdered (which, once again, shows how morally gray Alina is if The Darkling’s lies bother her more than his mass murder). But by that point, regardless of the positive effect he initially had on Alina, he betrayed her multiple times. But even when they were enemies, his greed for power pushed Alina to realize her ambitions. She recognized that she was never purely good despite being the Sun Summoner, and she learned to accept that. Like Mal, The Darkling pushed Alina toward her dreams and goals, even if neither did it intentionally.

The books did an excellent job demonstrating how these men affected Alina’s life and where she stood with each of them. But by Ruin and Rising, their dynamics changed drastically. I will explain more in the next section, but essentially, Alina’s relationships with Mal and The Darkling were uniquely complex in their own ways. However, the last book threw it out the window and simplified them significantly in favor of Alina ending up with Mal. But more on that later.

I want to clarify something—although I do prefer Alina and The Darkling’s relationship to Alina and Mal’s, the way Leigh Bardugo wrote the books, I did not want them to end up together. I made up my mind while reading Siege and Storm. I don’t remember which scene it was, but at some point, I realized regardless of what The Darkling felt for Alina, he will always choose power and corruption over her. In this story, he was too far gone to change his mind. It broke my heart, but The Darkling had spent centuries working on his master plan—he knew Alina for less than a year. If they knew each other for several years longer, I believe he might have started second-guessing whether power was worth losing her, but that just isn’t plausible in this narrative. After I had this realization, I concluded that Alina’s best endgame is herself. Her love life should have remained ambiguous—or even non-existent—by the end of the trilogy. Neither Mal nor Aleksander was good for her, and she had gone through such outstanding character development that it would have been a disservice to her. There was Nikolai, and I adore his friendship with Alina, but I never cared for their romance. Ideally, by the end of the series, I pictured Alina as head of the Second Army, involved with all things Grisha and Ravka. If she did not have her powers, then maybe as an advisor or something. But evidently, that is not what happened at all.

Before I continue, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge that if The Darkling had not lied and manipulated Alina, and if he had been honest from the beginning, there would have been a much greater chance of Alina allying with him at least conditionally. They really could have had it all. But that is not the point I want to make, so let us continue.

Now, we get to the real issues I had with the Shadow and Bone Trilogy. Essentially, Ruin and Rising changed the characters, especially Alina and Mal. Suddenly, Alina was no longer a morally gray character—she was starkly a hero, desperate to take down the villain. Alina never has any issue choosing the right thing to do, and it never conflicted with what she wanted. Alina literally vomits at the prospect of killing someone, even though there were moments where she thrived on these sentiments in the previous book. Yes, she felt guilty about them, but they still happened. I know that she is now Sankta Alina—a saint with a large following and a name she has to live up to if she wants to take down the Darkling. But her sudden characterization does not occur out of loyalty to her followers. I think part of the reason for this sudden change was so that her endgame with Mal makes sense. As I said earlier, Alina and Mal ultimately wanted different things. Mal wanted to be with a non-Grisha Alina, which is essentially tearing out her soul. Alina wanted to be with a Mal who loved her the way she was. There was no realistic path for them to be together unless their characters drastically changed with no development, which is exactly what happened.

In Ruin and Rising, Mal never questions her powers. He encourages Alina, believes in her as the Sun Summoner, and always puts her needs first. Mal no longer resents Alina for being Grisha, even though he wished she never discovered her powers in the first place. There was no indication or explanation of why he suddenly changed between novels—no character development, nothing. It was like he became a different character so that he could end up with Alina. This was the supportive best friend I wanted Mal to be all along, but I didn’t want it at the cost of no development. I wish we could have seen Mal truly develop into this persona, because I might have actually been on board with Mal and Alina’s romance if that were the case. Ultimately, it wasn’t.

Alina also spent two books grappling with her thirst for power and rule, but at the end of Ruin and Rising, she has no problem going back to Keramzin under a false name and living the life Mal wanted. Of course, she did not want to be queen, and she faked her death, so she did not have many options left. And Alina had to fake her death—if she remained alive, there would always be a price on her head. But neither of those issues change the fact that Alina wanted to be among her people, the Grisha. She wanted a peaceful life, but she wanted that life with her powers. But then again, what else was Alina going to do? Staying in Os Alta without her powers would have been torture for her. That’s why I don’t believe Alina really had a choice at the end of the trilogy. Without her powers, her best bet was to return to Keramzin with Mal. That ending would have been so much more powerful if Alina had her powers. In that scenario, she really could have chosen anything in the world, but she would still choose to return to Keramzin and rebuild the orphanage into a home of love, laughter, and acceptance.

I would also like to touch upon Mal’s death and the consequences of merzost. Alina losing her powers is the consequence of using this dark magic, even though it was not the consequence for the Darkling. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to either kill Alina, scar her, make her lose her mind, or fundamentally change her in some way that she could never be the same person again? She would become someone new—not the old version of herself. Personally, by the time the final battle rolled around, it made the most sense for The Darkling and Alina to die. This prospect aligns much more closely with the original consequences of merzost.

Speaking of merzost, how on earth did Mal come back to life without Tolya and Tamar dabbling in it? They are heartrenders without the effects of jurda—they are not capable of bringing the dead back to life. Mal wasn’t on his way out; he was already gone. So, if he comes to back life, shouldn’t Tolya and Tamar suffer consequences of merzost? It is the only explanation for how he revived. Why does Alina lose her powers, but nothing happens to Tolya and Tamar? There is no Small Science used in reviving the dead. The entire concept of merzost, ultimately, was inconsistent. It seemed like Leigh Bardugo altered it to suit an endgame for Alina and Mal, even though it makes no sense in the narrative. Actually, it seemed like Ruin and Rising was part of an entirely different series compared to the first two books—like Leigh Bardugo had to move mountains so that when Alina and Mal end up together, there was no room to be upset or question it.

Ultimately, Ruin and Rising presents a slew of issues, making the book inconsistent and incompatible with the first two. It is hard to believe that this ending was always what Leigh Bardugo had planned, and that is one last point I’d like to touch upon. But the third book disappointed me. It truly felt like Alina died in the Fold that day, and the person who remained was a shell of herself. She had come so far throughout the series only to regress her character so that she could be with a man that did not love her unconditionally. It is just infuriating when writers regress characters for the sake of their love interests, and that is what I feel Ruin and Rising was.

Unsurprisingly, I had a lot of trouble understanding narrative decisions, especially in Ruin and Rising. It was not until Leigh Bardugo posted a beautiful glow-up tribute on Instagram that I realized I did not interpret the Shadow and Bone Trilogy the way she wanted to tell the story. Regardless of how she wrote the first two books, Leigh Bardugo wanted to tell a story about a girl who had to fight her way out of the darkness.

But I did not read the series—or Alina’s character—like that. Alina Starkov did not fight her way out of darkness—she was a character with multiple dimensions; she had a darker side that magically disappeared in Ruin and Rising. When she faked her death at the Fold, I genuinely cried because it felt like Alina died that day. She finally grew into herself and became the person she wanted to be, only to return to the girl she once was.

Ultimately, to me, Alina wasn’t trying to find a way out of the darkness. She grappled with it and ended up losing herself as a consequence. The Shadow and Bone Trilogy is a story about a lost girl finding her way and becoming the best version of herself. It is about how nobody is purely good or evil, and everyone is capable of both. It is about the balance between light and dark, light and dark gravitating toward one another because they cannot exist without each other. It is about protecting and fighting for your people, no matter what the cost. However, I realize this interpretation is probably not what Leigh Bardugo intended, and I respect that.

I want to mention one more thing—I find it difficult to believe that Leigh Bardugo knew how the trilogy was going to end and that the way she wrote the series was always her plan. That is because just of how her publisher marketed Shadow and Bone. The original tagline for the novel was “A dark heart. A pure soul. A love that will last forever.” This exact phrase is also on earlier versions of the American edition. The first two books also painted The Darkling and Alina as a yin and yang, light vs. dark pairing, only to have it swept out from under the rug as their dynamic becomes more imbalanced. But I believe Leigh—so the marketing and depiction of The Darkling and Alina’s relationship might have just been the result of poor planning and miscommunication.

I know it might seem like I did not enjoy the books, but I genuinely did. I am so thankful for Alina Starkov and the Grisha world. Before picking up this series, I was a staunch friends-to-lovers advocate, and I disliked enemies-to-lovers for the most part. I am grateful that this series turned both tropes on their heads upside down, throwing my initial beliefs out the window. I think Leigh Bardugo is an excellent writer and a good storyteller, even if I interpreted the narrative differently. But she is still a strong storyteller. By the end of the series, I felt so many things, and I was so overwhelmed that I had to write it all down to process my emotions properly. That ended up being this blog post. I don’t usually do that for any book or series, so it is a testament to Leigh Bardugo’s talent. I may not understand or agree with some of her narrative decisions, but I am eternally grateful for this universe, the characters, and the relationships that she created.

Now that I’ve gotten all that out, I want to hear from you guys! Did you ever read the Shadow and Bone Trilogy? What did you think of it? Is there anything I said that you agree or disagree with? I’m still on a Grisha high, so please let me know what you’re thinking, even if you disagree entirely. I’d love to talk about it.

It’s been a while since we caught up, so there will be lots to talk about in my April Monthly Wrap Up! In the meantime, if you missed my previous post, I wrote a piece on why Herongraystairs from The Shadowhunter Chronicles is the best dynamic! I have not had any book reviews recently, but I’ve been reviewing TV shows for TV Fanatic abundantly. You can check out those reviews here. Finally, I have some exciting news that I will explain further in my April Wrap-Up: I will be a moderator on two panels for the Montreal YA Fest! It’s a book festival that is pretty much like BookCon or YALLWEST, except it is based in Montreal. But this year, we’re going online, and tickets are free! So if you’re interested in attending, all you have to do is register for free here.