 Okay, so Shadow and Bone. It was a fairly popular young adult series that came out a while ago that I heard about and just wasn't interested in. Like, I saw the books around, saw people talk about it. I just, it didn't interest me. I didn't think much about it. But then, a couple of months ago, they released a trailer for the Netflix show, which is supposed to come out in April, and I thought that looked really cool. So I was like, you know what, I think I'll, I think I'll check these books out. And I did. I got them all in audiobook, listened to them one after the other. And now I'm here today to tell you they were, they were pretty good. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, I don't think I can properly do this review without spoilers. So I'm just gonna give blanket spoiler warning for all three books on this whole thing. And if you want my brief non-spoiler thoughts, I think it's a fun series. Doesn't really break the mold that much. Doesn't really do anything all that amazing. But it doesn't need to. It's just a fun story with some magical adventure and one or two decent twists, one or two decent characters. Just there's some stuff in there that overall it was satisfying. So the plot to this series is that there is this country called Ravka, which is based on Tsarist Russia. And hundreds of years before the story begins, this giant tear in reality appeared, which they call the shadow fold. It's just this big black hole filled with monsters. And it's a big rift right down the middle of Ravka, which cuts the country in half. And so traveling from the east to the west is extremely dangerous, extremely difficult. And sometimes monsters will like emerge from the fold and go out and kill people and stuff. And so it's really dangerous. It really sucks. Enter our main character, an orphan named Alina, who has been drafted into the Ravkan military because most people are drafted into the military. And one day she travels across the shadow fold. She gets attacked and she discovers she has this crazy magical power. She is a sun summoner, so she can just summon really powerful light. And people think she actually might be able to destroy the shadow fold. And so she's brought to the palace. And then the story unfolds from there. The thing that stood out to me about the first book in this trilogy is that it's very short, like too short, actually, in my opinion. But the positive side to that is that it goes by real quick. And if you're not into it, then it doesn't really waste that much of your time. And the pacing is fast. So there's usually something interesting happening. I do wish that they had spent more time on Alina's training, like when she's learning to use her powers in the palace. But beyond that, I don't have too many issues with it. Basically, after her powers are discovered, she runs into this guy called the Darkling, who he also has crazy magic powers. He's like one of the most powerful Grisha is what they're called in this world. He's one of the most powerful in the whole world. And he's very high up in the military chain of command. And he's immediately like, it's very easy to see that he's evil. Like from the first page, I saw this guy was like, he's going to be the villain. And lo and behold, I was correct. It was not a very good twist or not a very shocking twist, I should say. But most of the first book is Alina training, forming a bit of a relationship with the dark one, where he's kind of a mentor to her, but she also is kind of attracted to him, and he reciprocates it, which is a little creepy because he's way older than her. And then she finds out, oh, Darkling is evil. He's actually going to use my powers because he created the Shadowhold, it turns out. He's going to use my powers to expand it and use it to take over the world because, whatever, he's just the villain. He's evil. So she runs off with her childhood friend, Mal, who the two of them are totally in love. And it's very easy to tell from the beginning that that's what's going on. And they run off and then they get captured by the Darkling, and then they escape. And that's the end of the first book. And the second book starts off with them on the run still, and then they immediately get captured again. And then they're with the dark one for a while. And then they escape again with the help of someone else. This guy named Nikolai, who is the prince of Ravka, or one of the princes of Ravka, I should say. And he's also a pirate king. Okay, that's a little weird, but don't dwell on it too much. And then most of the second book is them, like, building up their army and preparing to fight the Darkling for real and get rid of the Shadowfold once and for all. And then Darkling attacks again, and there's like some traitors and stuff. And the climax of the second book is like the whole palace and capital getting destroyed, and the heroes are on the run, they're like, well, the shit now what? And the third book starts, and not very much interesting happens throughout most of the book. Like once you get to the last quarter, maybe the last third from being generous, that's when things kick into overdrive again. And we do have a pretty satisfying climax and denim wall or resolution, whatever you want to call it. But getting to that point was pretty boring because the only bits that I liked of them in hiding were Nikolai finally taking the gloves off and coming to power, becoming the king. I thought that was pretty cool. But you know, my overall thoughts on the story of this series, I know I went through it relatively quick there. But my overall thoughts are that it should not have been three books, it should have been two. So like I said, the first book was a little too short. And I wish that they had spent more time on Alina's training because she doesn't get that good at controlling her powers until the third book. In fact, that was one of the parts of the third book that I liked is that she finally starts using it a lot better and starts using it in more unique ways. And I just wish that maybe they had done some of that earlier on and shown her struggle with it a bit more, that would have been cool. But then like I said, they had the whole capture, escape, capture, escape, capture, escape, which got annoying. So what they should have done is just not had them escape at the end of the first book, and then just expanded it all the way to the point where they escape with Nikolai. And that should have been the end of the first book. And then everything else should have been in the second book. But keep in mind, because a lot of the stuff that happens in the finale is just not that interesting and doesn't contribute to all that much, especially when they're in hiding. I would say just cut the bulk of that out. And then you'd wind up with two reasonably length books, or reasonable length books. I can't talk today. I'm not sure if the author just didn't quite plan this out from the beginning, the way she maybe should have, or if maybe the publisher pushed her into stretching it out to be three books or something like that. I don't know. But just overall, yeah, it would have been 10 times better if it had only been two books because there would have been less wasted time. But at the same time, they could have gone into more depth on stuff that just was more interesting, at least to me. I enjoy how we see Nikolai basically invent a whole bunch of new technology, or rather him and some of his friends invent a bunch of new technology, which is cool. And I enjoy that they do talk about political maneuvering, not just in Ravka's royal court, but among their foreign allies and enemies as well. I thought that was neat. And I do like how they do talk a little bit about how they're preparing the capital for an attack. So they're like bringing in the military and stuff. I just wish that they hadn't necessarily spent more time on that, but they had gone more into depth on it. So we learned more about the specifics of that sort of thing. Like, okay, this is specifically how the law works in the Ravkin court. And so we kind of have to work around this a little bit, find a loophole, something like that, in order to get this guy out of the way. Like, I think that would have been cool. It's also really, really obnoxious how repetitive the story gets in some points. Like I mentioned, escape, capture escape. But more than that, a huge chunk of this is focused on Alina and company finding amplifiers, which as the name implies will make her powers much more powerful. And so she can destroy the shadow fold or in the eyes of the darkling, he can actually control her and use her to control the shadow fold, which is not explained super well, but whatever it's magic, it doesn't necessarily have to make sense. And the first book, a big chunk of it is them hunting down this magical stag. And then they kill it, they use it to make an amplifier for her, which is fine. And then the second book, it starts off with them hunting down, killing this sea monster, kill it, make an amplifier, and that's when they escape. And then you get to the third book, and a chunk of that is them hunting down and killing this magical firebird, which it then turns out the bird was not the right amplifier, it was actually Alina's friend Mal, which was at least a little bit different. But still, the fact that we were going on these scavenger hunts all the time makes it seem almost like the author ran out of ideas, which got pretty annoying. And while the darkling does have his moments, like where he brings out his armies and kills a bunch of people, he never really comes across as that intimidating of a villain, like he doesn't have that much presence or anything. And the story really seems to be banking on the idea that you are terrified of him, like the audience, the characters, everyone's terrified by him, they know that if they slip up even a little bit, he will kill them and destroy everything they love. And he never really comes across that way. I mean, he's certainly powerful, sure, but he doesn't have the presence needed to pull that off. And because he's not trying to kill Alina, we know that she's never really in that much physical danger from him. Sure, he might enslave her, he might kill other characters that we love and things like that. But the fact that he's just coming after her and everything else is inconsequential, just, and we know that he's not going to kill her, it just, it prevents him from really being this scary force that the books were probably intending on him being. Speaking of characters, yeah, the darkling is just not that good. Now, I kind of liked how they bring up this idea of like the king of Ravka, or rather the monarchy of Ravka, because just as an institution, it just sucks for most of the people there. Like, they abuse their citizens in more of a PG-13 way, they don't really go into a lot of detail or graphic violence or anything like that with it. But still, they abuse their subjects, they just use them for tax revenue in a lot of ways, they use them as fodder for their wars, and so it kind of sucks for them. And the darkling kind of gets a couple of people on his side by saying, oh, I will take over the world when I can use the shadow fold effectively, and you'll instead live under my tyranny instead of theirs, which... The thing is, if you had done a little bit more to contrast the darkling's tyranny from the Ravkan monarchies, you could maybe have had an interesting conflict there, where you could actually see why people would want to follow the darkling, whereas in this, it just doesn't quite work, and also the main hero characters never really question if they're doing the right thing. You know, they'll criticize the monarchy a little bit, and at the end, when Nikolai becomes king, it's made clear that, yeah, he'll be a much better king than everyone else, but the characters never really have to grapple with their own morality there, which is a missed opportunity. And I was also a little annoyed that, like, you know, we had this chance to show the characters say, okay, Nikolai would be a good king, but there's no guarantee his children won't be idiots, or his grandchildren won't be idiots, so what if we try reforming things a little? And the thing is, this isn't at a medieval level of technology, it's at, like, 19th century level. They have firearms and stuff like that, so I think they could have, like, made, I don't know, they could have turned it into a constitutional monarchy with, like, an elected House of Representatives or something without it feeling anachronistic, or, you know, something like that. Something to show that, okay, yes, the world did change a little bit, and the darkling, while he was a crazy person, he was right that the current system just isn't working, and, like, you know, that could have been more interesting. Nikolai I did really like as a character. I, you know what, although so far as to say he's my favorite character in this, because he is just kind of a badass pirate at first, but then we learned, oh, okay, he's a secret prince, and he is actually very intelligent, he's a very good fighter, he clearly would be very good at running a country, but he's not in the, not the first in the line of succession, so he has to kind of maneuver and stuff in order to get himself in that position, and we know that, from pretty early on, we know that, like, yeah, he could probably play hardball here and just put himself in a position of power, but he doesn't want to because he doesn't think that would be right, and it's only near the end where he realizes, you know what, like, you guys are screwing this up too much, and he finally snaps and takes over, and I did really like that, I thought that worked really well. I don't have a whole lot to say about the character, I don't think he's that deep, but I liked him. My thoughts on Alina are kind of similar. It would have been so easy to just make her the generic main character girl, like, she discovers she has a power, she loves her childhood friend, she kind of sort of enters a love triangle with Nikolai, but it's made pretty clear that she's not that into him and she always is gonna love Mal, and she just gets pushed around by the plot until one day she defeats the bad guy, and how does she defeat the bad guy? Not through intelligence or planning or anything like that, just through having these powers given to her, and it would have been so easy to do that, but they didn't. Alina is basically a nobody at the beginning of the story, you know, she's just an orphan whose village was destroyed when she was too young to even really remember it, and she's okay being a nobody, you know, she just gets to blend in with the background and be one among millions of other people in Ravka, and then suddenly she's thrust into the spotlight, and it goes to great lengths to make sure that, yeah, she's uncomfortable having all this attention, having all this responsibility, having all this adoration, but she still bucks up and deals with it. She's like, you know what, I gotta hate having this responsibility, but people are depending on me now, so I gotta go out and do it, and I liked that, and there are points in the story where she does act on her own, you know, she doesn't just wait for things to happen to her, like when she finds out the Darkling is evil, she decides to go out, and while she could just run away and save herself, she decides, no, I can't do that, I have to go find the stag and the other amplifiers, and maybe I can use that to defeat him, because like the Shadow Fold is still killing people, the Darkling is still killing people, we gotta do something about this, and I did like that, and at the very end of the series, she's not the one who just saves the day by using her amazing powers, she actually gives up her powers, and other people suddenly get them, and then they will use it all to destroy the Shadow Fold and kill the Darkling's forces and stuff, and I'm just kind of a sucker for that kind of a twist at the end of things, you know, it's kind of like the twist at the end of Percy Jackson, where he doesn't just defeat Kronos by being a crazy badass, he just defeats him by deciding to trust Luke one last time, and then Luke is the one who defeats him, like, I enjoy things like that, you know, the hero is a hero, but not in the way you initially expected, and you know, same as with Nicolai, Alina's not a particularly deep character, in fact she did annoy me at a few points where she kind of goes into the, oh, I'm not like other girls, other girls are the worst, I'm ugly and they're pretty, that did get on my nerves at a few points, but it's really nothing too bad, and it does, it does go, well it doesn't go completely away, but after the first book it's not there nearly as much, and she's just not that deep of a character, but I did like her, you know, I did not mind following her all the way through this story, and I'm glad that she got her happy ending, because she had to work for it, and speaking of her happy ending, we have Mal, who's kind of just her love interest, you know, he clearly loves her, he gets frustrated by her, and frustrated by circumstances more than once, and he does lash out sometimes, which makes him seem like kind of a jerk in the first book, but it's understandable why he would act that way, and he did grow on me a little bit, but I just don't have that much else to add, and every other character in this is serviceable, that might sound like a critique, but it's really not, like they're all, they do what they're there to do, I remember one or two of them a little bit, they stood out from each other a little bit, I didn't grow that attached to any of them, but you know, they're all right, and much like all of that, the world is, you know, serviceable, I kind of liked it, but it's just, it's just not that deep, you know, Ravka is based on Tsarist Russia, which is a little different than things I've seen before, but nothing that stands out all that much, and in fact, once in a while I would find some like cultural thing about this world that stood out a little, which was neat, like we really do see how the shadow fold has been there for an extremely long time, and people have just kind of had to get used to it and learn how to work with it, and you see how society has changed and adapted to fit around that, which is pretty neat, but beyond that, like the culture doesn't really stand out that much, it's just kind of, it's there, and same with the magic, you know, they could have gone into more detail with it, I wish they had, and like if they had spent more time on Alina's training, they could have, but whatever, it's not that big a deal, it's fine, it's services, what's there, just fine, you know, the world is not that great, but I kind of liked it, and that's basically my thoughts on the series, like I know a lot of that didn't come across as glowing praise, but honestly I did enjoy this series, I really did, I would say it's above average, now if you're someone who like just hates young adult fantasy and all the tropes that it has, you're probably still gonna hate this one, it does change it up a little bit, but not all that much, and the thing is a story doesn't need to necessarily be super deep and super complex and have 20 different dimensions and have a super smart twist at the end that no one ever saw coming in order for it to work, like sometimes it can just be, yep, here's a fun adventure, you get a little attached to some of the characters, you're a little worried about them, and then at the end, they succeed, like that's fine, you can do stuff like that, and I am excited for the Netflix show, partially because the trailers that they've dropped have looked pretty good, and partially because as I was saying going through this, I saw plenty of room for improvement, and I want to see what the show does with that, so I guess watch it, hashtag not sponsored, bye. You're all really cool, all the names on here, they gave me money, and they get stuff like early access to videos and voting on future video topics, if you want to be one then do that, if you don't want to do that then join my channel, become a channel member, that's great, or just subscribe, like, video, comment, spread this around, I need help, bye.