I first heard of Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo when I was in my lack of time and mental capacity for reading period and the show caught my eye on Netflix. I love a good fantasy world and I binge watched the first season of Shadow and Bone in an embarrassingly short period of time. I loved it and it was so good I actually kept track of when the second season was to come out and did a rewatch of the first season in preparation. Friends. It was not until after I had watched the second season that my eldest child casually mentioned that there were books! I was flabbergasted because usually I am on top of this type of thing but she was right and I became determined to get myself a copy of them.

I added them to my Amazon cart to save for later like usual and then spent a couple of years searching for them at used bookstores because I knew that they were popular enough to be there. Unfortunately I did not find them for so long my daughter finally was like you have made an effort why don’t you just buy them from Amazon. And yes, she was right, they were on sale and I got them super cheap. They are not they type of book that I would read once and be done and they also are right up my middle child’s alley so I ended up breaking down and purchasing them. I have only read the first book and it was amazing! I would have ripped through the whole series but I made myself wait until I had written out this review first to start the second one.

Shadow and Bone follows Alina and Mal on their growing of age adventure during a dark time in their world ruled by The Dark One. In the past this Dark One split the continent in two with a dark entity called TheFold which is host do demons that eat anyone who tries to go through it. The Dark One can only be defeated but a Sun Summoner which nobody has seen in a very long time. Alina and Mal grew up together at an orphanage and somehow missed the testing of their powers at a preteen age and the story follows their journey into discovery and how they plan on defeating The Dark One.

The books and the TV show are both very well written and I became invested in many of the side characters as well as the main ones. The level of the books is similar to and older YA book as a guide for those that were wondering. There is a little bit of adult stuff and the violence is similar to The Hunger Games.

I highly recommend both the show and the books to anyone who loves this type of fantasy. As always, I will not give too much away but know that I bought this series and Six of Crows and plan on reading the rest of them ASAP. It was that good!

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Links:

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo