Siege and Storm (Grishaverse, #2) (Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2)

by Leigh Bardugo

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Read a lot of mixed thoughts about this book before I picked it, but I’m happy to say that I’m amongst those who had a more favourable opinion of it in the end despite that big glaring issue.

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This book follows immediately where we left of in Shadow and Bone with us exploring a couple of new places and expanding her world. The first third of this book is extremely fast paced and more than that, it shows this pretty cool mini adventure our characters have to go through before we get back to the much more important issue at hand, and while I wouldn’t have minded a slower pace alongside learning a little bit more about the creature; I do appreciate the fact that Leigh Bardugo didn’t focus too much on it and having it take the biggest part of the book. No, the book focuses on more important things to the narrative in the long run, such as the politics, the two Grisha armies, legends, the difference in ideologies when considering “power” and the new characters in the cast.

I really enjoyed seeing the struggle Alina has to go through when taking in her abilities and her current duties, for the sole reason that it opened up the discussion about Power. Everyone has an opinion about something, this one is no different and the book didn’t shy away from showing both opinion and applications of power if the need ever arose. The political struggles were another thing I enjoyed seeing here because it combined a few of the above aspects together and gave a more prominent view of how Ravka functions and what easily led the Darkling to do what he did in book one, although if I had to choose one thing I enjoyed the most from the aspects then it’ll probably be the legends that were entwined amongst one of the factions and more importantly, how it could affect the future from here onwards.

The new characters were fun to meet, especially the “notorious privateer” who brought in both sass and wit alongside an enjoyable amusing presence that it easily made him one of the most interesting characters in the series. Meeting the old characters again like Genya, Botkin, Baghra and others made me wish for more interactions with them than without them because honestly, whenever Alina was interacting with them the book was an enjoyable quick read however, whenever the focus shifted on the romance between her and Mal alongside the potential of either a love triangle or square made the book drag on.

It doesn’t help whatsoever when the reasoning of the pathetic drama are misunderstandings that stem from Alina’s never ending questioning of her self worth against the most trivial of things and from Mal himself being petty and annoying. I understand the feeling of being inferior, I understand the feeling of feeling worthless and I understand feeling that you may not matter, HOWEVER, it gets freakin annoying when a simple conversation without any holds barred can define the positions of all parties in this story and the more important things to focus on, BUT it never happens for reasons that I don’t understand. Talking is not difficult, setting things straight is not difficult if the person you’re talking to is supposedly your best friend before anything else and more importantly, it’s not difficult to figure out what needs to be done vs what you want to happen. This pathetic drama doesn’t need to exist, especially not in this setting and the direction the book took.

I may be somewhat harsh with the above, but nothing annoys me more than to see a protagonist kill off their potential development because they can’t keep their head straight. It’s disappointing and it’s boring. That glaring issue being prominent throughout the second and third thirds of the book and the lesser issue of the frequent usage of Russian words that I took a while to remember or figure out aside, the book was still a much better experience than I expected and I really hope that my lowered expectations after the first book didn’t play too much of a part into that. I definitely look forward to see where we go from here and hopefully Ruin and Rising ends it with a bang next time.

Final rating: 4/5

I do think that it might be a slightly generous rating though.... meh.