By: Emily Papleux 

The Second book in the Shadow and Bone trilogy continues the story with new characters, relationships, and conflicts. “Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina Starkov must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land. She finds starting new is not easy while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret.”  

I immediately got this book as soon as I had finished reading Shadow and Bone, so I was eager to jump right in. The prologue starts off exactly where the last book left off. It has a nice, descriptive feel and a vague sense of writing that adds onto the excitement. We finally see Mal and Alina together, though hiding away on a ship, running from The Darkling and the allies that have sided with him. Alina’s well-being gets worse, and she summons sunlight a little bit every day to feel the Grisha power regenerate her energy. She still maintains her funny and sarcastic characteristics, in which Mal always plays along. Its good to see how the characters adapt to their new environment, but don’t loose their whole personality based on their situation, which is something I see a lot of.  

This book had the most boring parts, but all of it was completely worth it to get to the end. If you didn’t dislike Mal in the first book, this second one will definitely give you a small push to do so. He becomes more stubborn and selfish, as he doesn’t see himself in Alina’s future because of her journey and destiny to defeat The Darkling. In the beginning of the book, you see the start of a relationship between them. But as the book continues, there’s jealousy and conflict of interest between them both. Mostly regarding the newly introduced Nikolai, Prince of Ravka, and the sassy Zoya who continues the journey alongside them. 

But as new relationships grow, so does the threat at hand. The Darkling has dabbled in dark magic, resulting in the Nichevo’ya, The Darkling’s army of shadow monsters summoned at will. His motives don’t change, but this new power of his gives him more of an upper hand than he’d ever had before.  And after Alina had left him to die in The Fold, there’s even more tension between these characters when they meet again.  

I give this book a 4/5 stars. You start to see character growth, which is usually hard to do with not only so many characters, but so many threats and new territory. Leigh did an amazing job making my love for these characters grow (yes, even the bad ones). I give one point off just because it didn’t “feel” like a five star to me, but it still made me look at the cover and say “w o w” after I finished it. 

Favorite quotes: 

• “Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea” 
• “The Darkling just stared out into the waves. I considered shoving him over the railing. Sure, he was hundreds of years old, but could he swim?” 
• “Not a chance. You two have a bad habit of acting like fools and calling it heroic.”