Review: Ruin and Rising

I was expecting to be infuriated by this book, and instead I'm just kind of....meh? I didn't hate it, but this isn't the ending I would have picked.

However, since I'm also not the author, that doesn't really matter, does it?

So, the final book in the Grisha trilogy opens with Alina stuck underground at the White Chapel, the Apparat's home base. He wants to glorify her as a saint to the faithful pilgrim army he's amassed, but there's one problem: she can't summon anymore.

Or, well, she can probably summon, but she's too far underground to call sunlight to her, and the Apparat's totally unwilling to let someone as important as her go back aboveground. At least, until Mal and her other friends stage a mock-revolt and blow a hole in the one room in the chapel that has aboveground access, allowing her to call on her powers and pull the rug out from under the Apparat.

He begrudgingly agrees to let them go in search of the mysterious firebird, which will hopefully be the third and final amplifier Alina needs. They have to be careful, though - the Darkling has been destroying access tunnels left and right, and they don't want to walk out of a functional one into an ambush. They also need to figure out who has to go along with them to find the firebird, and who they might be able to send over to West Ravka into safety.

Tolya and Tamar inform the rest of them about a somewhat nearby smugglers' post Nikolai used to use once they're on the surface, and they decide to stop there first, hoping that Nikolai is still alive and might be able to help them. After almost getting caught by the First Army, Alina's band is rescued by the man himself and taken to his new base up in the mountains.

They all reconnoiter there for a while, making plans and getting more training, and everything seems to be going relatively smoothly. (There are a couple minor bumps in the road, but they work themselves out with minimal damage.) This, of course, means it's the perfect time for the Darkling to attack, which he does. He transforms Nikolai into some kind of monstrous bird-like creature and does some serious damage to the rest of the group, prompting yet another last second escape.

Now a little more bruised and worn, Alina's group finally makes it to the mountains where they suspect the firebird lives, and they begin the expedition to find it. When the firebird finally reveals itself, only Mal and Alina are actually present, and it leads her to a shocking revelation - the firebird's not the amplifier. Mal is.

Baghra told Alina her life story back at Nikolai's base, informing her that she, Baghra, is actually Ivan Morozova's elder daughter. (Yes, that Morozova, the man who infused the stag and the sea whip with their amplifying powers.) She had a younger sister that died, and Morozova resurrected her, infusing her and not the firebird with the power. Alina puts two and two together, and realizes that Mal's descended from the younger sister, which is why he's so spookily good at tracking. She automatically refuses to kill him, but he makes her swear that when the time's right, she'll do it anyways.

The time becomes right soon after, once the band makes its way back to the Fold. They've managed to get word to the Apparat to send his army, but only a few came - they had to sneak out, because he wasn't actually permitting anyone to go. The whole group is planning on sneaking up on the Darkling's skiff once it's in the middle of the Fold, but he's expecting them, and soon their plans go too awry to be saved. Mal comes running up to Alina, and she does what she has to do, stabbing him in the chest-

-and then another unexpected event occurs. Mal dies, but instead of his death amplifying Alina's power, it releases it instead. Now all of the non-Grisha fighters can summon minor amounts of sunlight, and they figure out how to work together and dismantle the Fold once and for all.

Alina's powerless now, but she's still capable of wielding a knife, and she kills the Darkling herself. She also makes her friends promise that they'll claim she died on the battlefield, leaving the newly untransformed Nikolai to lead Ravka. The epilogue informs us that she and Mal moved back to Keramzin and began their own orphanage, where they're visited periodically by some strange, grand guests.

Like I said before, I don't know if this is the ending I would have wanted for this series, but it's the ending I got. Even though Alina's loss of power was much less voluntary than I'd heard, I still don't particularly like it. I get that she didn't like all the changes she had to make in her life thanks to the discovery of her power, but sometimes you can't just magically get rid of your problems and go back to your old ways. I'd rather she finally learned to deal with her new circumstances and accept that she can't just be the old Alina anymore rather than get this deus ex machina of an ending.

I at least learned to like Mal again in book three. He was kind of a brat in Siege and Storm, but he admitted to that in Ruin and Rising and tried to amend his ways, as did Alina. I'm still not a diehard Mal/Alina shipper, but I'm not so turned off by it anymore, either.

(Let's be real, though, Tamar/Nadia and Genya/David are the real masterpiece ships of this series. Canon lesbians! In a fantasy series! That don't just have angst all the time! Be still my heart!)

Overall, Ruin and Rising is really good to its side characters and only okay to its two biggest protagonists. They have each other now, yes, but I'm a little skeptical that they'll be totally satisfied with that for the rest of their lives. Four stars, because the writing was still A+.

Review: Siege and Storm

Yep, it's official, I'm still all about this series.

Alina and Mal are across the True Sea after escaping the Darkling, disguising themselves and taking whatever work they can find so they can save up some cash and continue to travel. Alina doesn't particularly like it, but it's better than the alternative.

And then the alternative happens. The Darkling is waiting for them in their boardinghouse one afternoon, and he's got a new power: he can create shadow monsters, vaguely person-shaped and corporeal. One of them bites Alina, causing her to black out.

When she awakens, Alina's on board a ship heading back across the True Sea in search of the mythical sea whip, another creature that might be able to amplify her powers. Having more than one amplifier is supposed to end poorly for anyone who attempts it, but the Darkling believes that the storied history of the sea whip means it will be an exception.

The captain of this ship is Sturmhond, a notorious pirate. While Alina knows she can't trust him, she can't help but like him, especially when he promises he'll help her and Mal escape once they land. Sure, he was paid to get them back to Ravka - but he made no promises about delivering them safely to his patron.

The sea whip is found soon enough once Mal's forced to track it, and Sturmhond loads himself, his most trusted crew, Mal, and Alina on board a smaller boat to get her close enough to kill it for herself - she's not making the same mistake after the stag. Once Alina's killed the whip and taken its scales for herself, though, things take a bit of an unexpected turn.

Sturmhond fires on his ship and gets their little boat of the range of the Darkling's powers, leaving him to his fate and getting Alina and Company back to land. Another surprise? Sturmhond's boat can fly, thanks to some modifications he's made and the two wind-summoning Grisha he's got on his crew. After an eventful trip across the Fold, they run into a group of soldiers, which doesn't seem like it will end well.

And then Sturmhond reveals he's actually Grand Duke Nikolai Lantsov, younger son of the king.

When Alina heard he was off learning about ships at college, this wasn't really what she had pictured.

Nikolai takes the group back to the capital, staging productions about Alina's magnificent return as the Sun Summoner as they go and even proposing marriage. Naturally, neither Mal nor Alina is super thrilled about that offer, but he takes it in stride. He's much more politically savvy than he'd appear, and he knows they wouldn't be a love match.

Once they arrive back at Os Alta, Alina takes over as head Grisha and commander of the Second Army in the Darkling's place. She forces the different types of Grisha to work together to figure out ways they can defend themselves from the Darkling's inevitable attack, which actually seems to work out. She also tirelessly researches the third legendary Ravkan creature: the firebird. If she can manage to hunt down and kill it, she'll finally have more power than the Darkling.

Unfortunately, some things don't work out quite as well. Mal gets testy and restless, for one. He's now the captain of Alina's personal guard, but he's not cut out for court life and starts to resent much of what he's made to do. For two, Nikolai's spoiled older brother Vasily gets suspicious of Nikolai, thinking he's plotting to take the throne - which, to be fair, Nikolai is. When Vasily announces that he's made a treaty with Fjerda, Ravka's biggest enemy, he accidentally unleashes a battle royale on the palace, allowing the Darkling to basically massacre everyone around.

Alina and the Darkling have yet another showdown, and things aren't looking great for either of them by its climax. Will Alina become a martyr for the cause after all?

First things first: Nikolai/Sturmhond is possibly my favorite character in this entire series. He's funny, he's very adept at court life, and he genuinely does mean well, even if he's also looking to take over the throne. I'm really hoping that his fate being unknown at the end of Siege and Storm means he's not dead, because I might throw my copy of book three against a wall if I find out otherwise.

(Also, Alina/Nikolai might be taking over as my favorite potential couple of the series. Oops.)

Plot-wise, this book held up what Shadow and Bone put in place quite well, in my opinion. I loved seeing Alina develop as a smart leader, and I also liked Alina seeing that her actions have consequences, too. She's got so much power literally at her fingertips now that she's got a second amplifier, and she needs some reality checks every so often to make sure she doesn't go down the same corrupted road as the Darkling.

However, I'm liking Mal less as time goes on. He only seems happy when he's got more status/power than Alina, which is not at all a good sign. I can understand not liking court life, and it's fair to say that Alina didn't make a great decision in making him come with her to the Little Palace when she knew he wouldn't enjoy it. That doesn't excuse him being insufferable about Alina using her powers. We get it, Mal, you miss the days when you were the Big Man On Campus and Alina was your best buddy. Now grow a pair and get over it.

I think my only wish for book three is Alina finding an actually decent friend for once. Genya was being manipulated by the Darkling, Mal doesn't like her Grisha powers, and Nikolai and her other guards all have their own interests and beliefs, too. If Alina could find a trustworthy person at some point, that would be splendid.

Overall, Siege and Storm was a thrill from start to finish, with plenty more whiplash-causing plot twists and honestly funny sarcastic humor. I honestly feel like I'm in a bit of a rut now - I don't have Ruin and Rising yet, so what am I supposed to read? Five stars.

Review: Shadow and Bone

Not gonna lie, I'm not super disappointed I found this so late in the game, because at least now I won't have to wait for any of this trilogy to be released.

#winning

Alina Starkov is an orphan serving time in the First Army of Ravka, as all young citizens must do. Her profession is cartography, while her lifelong best friend and secret crush Mal uses his keen abilities as a tracker for the good of Ravka. Their unit is traveling west to the other side of the Fold, a dangerous, dark place full of people-eating monsters, aka the volcra. It's not incredibly likely that either one of them won't make the journey alive, but accidents happen, so they're both feeling wary.

Their unit is midway through the Fold when the unthinkable happens and Mal gets attacked. Already on edge from losing another friend to the volcra, Alina fights her way over to Mal in a seemingly futile attempt to save him.

Seemingly futile, at least, until she utilizes a dormant power she didn't even know she had and calls light down into the Fold, scaring away the volcra. Alina is immediately taken to the Darkling, the head of all the Grisha in Ravka.

What are the Grisha, you may ask? The Grisha are practitioners of the Small Science, capable of things like healing, manipulating the elements, or creating potent chemical compounds. The Darkling is their leader, a human amplifier also capable of calling down darkness as a weapon. They live in the Little Palace back in Ravka's capital once they're found as children, because all children in Ravka get tested for Grisha powers. So how did Alina escape?

Alina puts that question aside and tries to focus on learning how to channel her powers. Even though she's the only Sun Summoner the kingdom has, she can't seem to make her power come when she wants it. Once she figures out the key, though, she's releasing more power than anyone could expect - and the Darkling only wants to make it stronger.

The Darkling is suave and handsome, and he wants Alina, both for her powers and as a girlfriend. He claims that if they can find a mythical stag, its antlers will amplify her power so much that they'll finally be able to destroy the Fold and re-unite Ravka. Awesome, right?

So of course this is the moment when it's revealed that the Darkling is actually a power-hungry villain who wants to control Alina's powers so he can eventually take over the world. He'll use her gift to pick off all the volcra, then use his own powers to expand the Fold as a threat to Ravka and her neighbors. Alina manages to escape the palace, though, and meets up with Mal to find the stag herself and claim its antlers before the Darkling can claim them for her.

And then everything falls to crap again. The end of the book is looking pretty hopeless for Alina, but she finds a couple more tricks up her sleeves, pulling off one last daring escape as the first book in the Grisha trilogy comes to a close.

I adore this series, you guys. Alina reminds me a lot of Percy Jackson with her dry, uncontrollable sarcasm, and watching her banter with someone is a true gift. The characters are also fairly complex, acting for/as both the "good" guys and the "bad" guys out of pure self-interest. While we know that Alina's working for the ultimate good, we have to figure out alongside of her which of her friends are trying to do the same and which just want to work solely for themselves.

The Russian themes of this book are also fantastic, in my opinion. I've always loved reading about Russian culture and the Romanov dynasty, so having a whole fantasy series use Russian mythology as its basis is like Christmas Day for me.

I even don't really mind the love triangle aspect. Alina has always liked Mal, but the Darkling is attractive and captivating, and she believes Mal has given up on her. She feels a real, well-developed pull to each of them, and for a while it's unclear who the "winner" is going to be. (I mean, until the Darkling's true character is revealed, but even then it could still fall in his favor.) The relationship drama is definitely present throughout the novel, but it never feels like Alina's biggest struggle, which pleases me - she's got some real issues to deal with!

If you like rich fantasy universes and sarcastic heroines, then you definitely need to go read Shadow and Bone right now. Five stars.