Books by Leigh Bardugo

I read and reviewed Shadow and Bone in 2013. Spoiler: I didn’t like it much, which is why I never bought the sequels. A small part of me, however, was curious how the story would continue so when I got my new library membership, this was the first book I picked up. And what can I say? I’m glad I didn’t invest in the English hardcovers. I just can’t warm up to this series. Maybe I’m a little more critical than I usually would be because I didn’t like the first one. I don’t want to get too much into details here to keep it spoilerfree, but I’ve got a couple of things I want to address …

Oh my, such a disappointment! After a wonderful, exotic, very gloomy and atmospheric 100 pages that got my hopes up, the awesomeness petered out. The world, the story, the characters – everything had so much potential! Unfortunately, the writing couldn’t live up to it and soon everything lost its glamour: the enthralling mysteries became far too obvious, the rugged beauty had to make way for a boarding school atmosphere and could never truly recover, and the characters turned out to be as flat as a pancake . . .