Ruin and rising by Leigh Bardugo
Hello Books Lovers,
We have also reached the end of this trilogy, the first of the Grishaverse, which began with shadow and bones, followed by siege and storm, to arrive at the end with Ruin and rising, released for Mondadori just two days ago. A volume that will leave you speechless, bewildered in many points, both positively and negatively.
A few days ago while reading I had also published an update on instagram, expressing my perplexity about what I was reading at the time, to more than half the book. Things in some places have become quite absurd and it will be very difficult to talk about this book without spoilers, I would like to give you some info that made me not totally love this book, but I can not :(, so I will try to make you understand what I am talking about without saying it explicitly so if you read the book, at the right point you will understand what I am talking about.
Obviously the most important thing in this book is to find the firebird so that Alina has all three amps and can have the strength to defeat the darkling, with the help of many other Grishas who want peace and freedom. But Alina also has to deal with the fact that everyone now knows her and considers her a saint, and even if this produces her allies, it’s not a good situation for people who are trying to go unnoticed to save the world.
The relationship between Alina and Mal is also not in the best of positions. We had started the first book with Mal not looking at Alina the way she looked at him, to continue in the second volume, until Nikolai arrived, with them becoming a couple, and now in the third volume things are more complicated than never. Mal clearly still has feelings for her, and she for him, but having drifted apart has made them focus on goals other than their love life. Things will evolve once again towards the mid-end of the book making some of the choices of the two questionable by us readers.
And then there is the finding of the firebird, which is far from what we expected, and this is where things got a bit absurd for me. But one thing I didn’t particularly appreciate was the final fight. This is a small spoiler, but I also think it’s a situation that we all expected would happen in this latest volume. For me the last fight was too fast, too dictated by Alina’s feelings. It could have been written differently, with different actions, but we know well that although we readers complain about something, it is always the author who decides how things go so we can’t do much about it.
The ending was a bit like that. I don’t consider this my favorite volume of the trilogy. Probably my favorite is the Shadow and Bones, but in less than a month now the series will be out on Netflix, and I’m really, really curious to find out how faithful it will be, I hope also because the trailer looks somewhat similar to the events of shadow and bones and Six of Crows, let’s keep our fingers crossed and wait for April 23 to arrive, plus, exactly two days ago the official trailer came out, so if you haven’t watched it yet you should definitely take a look at it. I love how the two book series are entwined together.
My evaluation is a bit indicative, in the sense that I have not yet understood what this volume is worth with its pros and cons, for now I give it 3.5 stars which are not even full. If you have read it, how did it seem to you? Was it a worthy ending for you to this trilogy that started explosively?
P.S. good April Fool Books Lovers, but alas, not having fully appreciated this book is no joke. May your April be full of readings.
