“When people say impossible, they usually mean improbable.”
Hello Everyone!
Today I am going to be doing a review of ‘The Grisha Trilogy’ by Leigh Bardugo, which consists of ‘Shadow and Bone’, ‘Siege and Storm’ and ‘Ruin and Rising’. This is going to be a spoiler free review, so you can all read it! As I mentioned in my last book review, I am changing up the format of my reviews, so I will now be splitting the post up into 4 sections: characters, plot, tropes and an overall section. The overall section will contain anything else that I want to mention from the book that didn’t fit into any of the other 3 categories. I am going to tell you before I start that I adored this trilogy and it has gone straight to the top of my all time favourite books! I gave every book 5/5 stars and I can’t wait to read more from her, so I apologise in advance if this post doesn’t make much sense because all I can do is gush about this series.
I’m going to start with the character because they are what I am most excited to talk about and I have so much to say because I simply adored them all.
I loved Alina as a main character because she was interesting and brave and strong, but she was also very realistic. She was afraid, she made some reckless choices, she got angry and said things she didn’t mean and felt the pressure of what had been put upon her. I loved this because a lot of characters are simply fearless and seem a bit too perfect, but Alina was flawed and I loved her for that. As I was reading, I really felt myself in Alina’s shoes: I felt everything she did and it was just so amazing to really feel as if I was the main character whilst also reading about someone else.
Mal is one of my new favourite characters of all time. I don’t even know how to express my feelings about him because I just love him so much! He isn’t perfect, but, just like Alina, that is what makes him an even better character. I honestly don’t know how anyone can not love Mal because he is just so brilliant!
The Darkling is perhaps the best villains I have ever read. In fact he is the most amazing villain I have ever read and that is for so so many reasons. From the start I was suspicious of him, but like I mentioned earlier, I really felt like I was in Alina’s shoes, so I started to trust him as she did and I felt the confusion and betrayal that she did when she found out the Darkling’s plans. What made him a great villain for me was that even though he was the bad guy, he was still a person. The motives behind his actions were very human and you saw the way his loses throughout the series really effected him like it did the other characters. He still cared, he still had emotions, which I think really came to light in the last book and I just adored him as a character. Obviously he was the bad guy and did a lot of bad things, but I still can’t help but feel sympathy for him and mourn the person he could have been.
The last 2 characters I am going to talk about are Genya and Nickolai. I have have chosen to talk about these two together because I love them both for the same reasons. They both went through so much in their lives, had rumors spread about them, suffered massively at the hands of the Darkling and yet still managed to keep a brave face, laugh their way through and keep a light heart. I adored them both and I cannot wait for the new duology about Nickolai to come out!
“I love it when you quote me.”
Now I have gushed about my favourite characters, lets get onto the plot: I thought the plot was amazing and I was constantly on the edge of my seat. Just when I thought things would calm down for a few chapters or I thought I knew what direction the story was going in Leigh Bardugo would throw something else in the mix or take the story in a completely different direction, taking me by surprise. I loved it though because it meant I truly couldn’t guess what was going to happen and made me want to carry on reading, so I knew if my favourite characters were safe. The biggest plot twist for me was at the end of the book and I won’t spoil it, but I didn’t see it coming at all! The ending destroyed me and I loved every second of it because Leigh Bardugo is a phenomenal author.
I don’t personally feel like there were any popular tropes in this book that I noticed, but I may have missed something because I am not very well versed in them as I personally don’t mind most unpopular tropes. I am quite an easy-to-please reader and don’t get too nit-picky about that sort of thing, so I am just going to move straight onto talking about all of the other small things I loved about this trilogy that didn’t fit in anywhere else.
The first thing is the writing. I have actually read Wonder Woman by Leigh Bardugo before, so I have had some experience with her writing, but I put my love of that book down to the fact that I loved Wonder Woman and not Leigh Bardugo herself, so I never really thought about her writing, but after reading the grisha trilogy I have realised what an amazing author she is and just how entrancing her writing is. I also adored the world that she created. It is just such a unique concept to me, there were lots of layers to it, everything was well thought out and it functioned in a similar way to out world, which made it so realistic to read about and helped me really get involved with the world and the politics. I also love that it was based off of Russia because it was something different to what I’m used to and was really refreshing to read about.
I of course gave this whole series a 5/5 stars as, if you couldn’t already tell, I completely adored it! I literally couldn’t put the book down and I actually abandoned my dinner and let it get cold one night just so I could finish the final book because I needed to know how it ended. I flew through them so fast that I was actually reading about 100 pages an hour, which is almost twice as fast as I usually read as I usually read at about 50-60 pages an hour! By the time this post goes up I will likely have finished reading a language of thorns by Leigh Bardugo and will then move onto the six of crows duology because I need to know more about this world and read more of Leigh Bardugo’s amazing writing.
Have you read any of Leigh Bardugo’s books? Did you love them as much as I do? Drop a comment and let me know!
Goodbye for now!
Over and Out
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