TV #12 of 2023: Shadow and Bone, season 2 I continue to enjoy this YA fantasy adaptation, but I think this second season fumbles its ending enough that downgrading my rating to three-out-of-five stars feels appropriate overall. After rushing through a condensed version of the novels Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising that close …
Tag Archives: Grishaverse
Book Review: Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
Book #137 of 2021: Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo (King of Scars #2) This is a much busier volume than its predecessor in the King of Scars duology, but author Leigh Bardugo impressively manages to bring it all together in the end (which is a welcome change from how disconnected Nina’s storyline felt before). …
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TV Review: Shadow and Bone, season 1
TV #42 of 2021: Shadow and Bone, season 1 It took me a couple episodes to get fully on-board with this YA literary adaptation, but I believe that’s largely down to the incorrect assumptions that I brought to the experience. All of the promotional materials that I had seen for the show seemed to be …
Book Review: The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo
Book #16 of 2021: The Lives of Saints by Leigh Bardugo A short collection of dark fables from author Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse, some of which have been referenced before in the main novels and others that merely add further texture to the local cultures of the setting. It’s an interesting addition to series canon, especially …
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Book Review: King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo
Book #63 of 2019: King of Scars by Leigh Bardugo (Nikolai Duology #1) After five novels — and some short stories that I haven’t yet read — author Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse setting feels wonderfully lived-in. This latest volume is the start of a new duology in that Russian-flavored fantasy world, but it essentially reads as …
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Book Review: Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo
Book #10 of 2018: Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #3) This final novel in Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy is the first one that I feel really approaches the quality of her later Six of Crows series. (Or to put that more charitably, the five Bardugo books that I’ve now read get steadily better …
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Book Review: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo
Book #242 of 2017: Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #2) Two books in, I’m still pretty lukewarm on this trilogy. It’s good enough to keep reading, especially for the extra background on author Leigh Bardugo’s superior semi-sequel series Six of Crows, but far too much time is spent on the main character’s love …
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Book Review: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Book #192 of 2017: Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo (Grisha #1) This is the first novel in Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha trilogy, a series I’m reading after (and on the strength of) the author’s Six of Crows and its sequel Crooked Kingdom. Those books share a world with this series and take place after it, …
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Book Review: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo
Book #106 of 2017: Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows #2) As much as I liked the fantasy heist novel Six of Crows, I was a little put off when the ending seemed to wrap up its main plot and then throw a curveball cliffhanger out of nowhere, because I didn’t relish the …
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Book Review: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Book #71 of 2016: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows #1) I still don’t quite understand the title, but Six of Crows was a really fun fantasy heist novel, featuring a gang of criminals breaking into (and back out of) a high-security prison to rescue a captured scientist with the chemical formula …
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