Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo
Hello Books Lovers,
today’s review comes a little later than usual but I couldn’t write it without first finishing reading the book. As I mentioned yesterday, today is the turn of Siege and Storm, the second volume of the first Grisha trilogy by Leigh Bardugo which in April – finally – will land on Netflix. I will try not to make spoilers, but if you have not read the first volume I recommend you to read my review.
We left the first volume with Alina who finally manages to escape from the clutches of the Darkling and on the run along with Mal, her childhood best friend, and her true love, seek refuge in a distant village after a not short journey . But even if everyone hoped the Darkling was dead this would have been too good to be true, after all, what Leigh-Bardugo-Style trilogy would have been without a self-respecting villain?
The Darkling is alive and indeed reappears in this second volume far too quickly than I expected. Alina and Mal left behind some naive traces, easily traceable and here after a couple of days of staying in the new village, after finding jobs and saving to go even further away to a safer place, are found, and predictably captured at this point.
Everyone thought that the Deer was the only Morozova amplifier, but it is not so and the Darkling is leading them towards the other, on a whaler with a crew commanded by the greatest known privateer, Stormhund, and apparently also the youngest. The Darkling uses Mal, his tracker skills, to find the dragon. But Alina is once again helped to escape, taking the dragon with her. It is she who kills him and it is always she who devises an even more suicidal plan. There is a third amplifier and if they want to have even the slightest chance of defeating the Darkling they have to find it.
This is a bit like one of the main objectives of this second volume, to be able to arm themself and even have a chance to destroy the unsea and the one who created it. Even this ending left me speechless, making me understand that we are approaching a third book that promises to be bloody, and not without the usual betrayals and dangers. If I have to compare this second book with the first I would say that it had something less even if I don’t know what. Shadow and Bones was slightly more exciting, more addicting. But even if this didn’t keep me attached to the pages day and night it had its share of adventure and adrenaline that made me fall in love with the Grisha world again, at this point I have to wait for the third volume and I’m sure that the good will prevail.
Then we want to talk about the characters for a moment? Alina is ok come on, in the first volume she was a little too manipulated, but here she is becoming independent and that’s fine, but Mal, it’s okay that he is a great tracker and Alina is in love with him but sometimes his choices gets on my nerves, and if I have to be honest I would have much preferred the Darkling if only he were not the villain of the story who presumably will eventually be defeated. On the latter, on the other hand, now that the mask has been thrown, the great change is noticed, the true evil in him, yet still I can never understand if he ever really cared about Alina or it was always a whole scene . Another character that I cannot understand is Genya, she has seen everything firsthand, yet she remains so dull despite every so often trying to help Alina reluctantly.
Each character is particular in its own way, but all this fits the rest since the Grishaverse, both in Six of Crows and in Shadow and Bones is a particular, dangerous world, and let’s face it if we were to live in it, it’s certainly not suitable for the weak of heart. Having said that I highly recommend you all, and I mean all, Bardugo’s books, even The Ninth House as well which I found slower as a story but I’m still waiting for a sequel to see if we save Darlington.
