Shadow and Bone

“I'd been lonely my whole life, but I'd never been truly alone before, and it wasn't nearly as scary as I'd imagined.”

I started the Grishaverse with the Six of Crows duology. So going into this book I already knew about the Second army, the types of Grisha, and the ending of this trilogy as it was talked about in Six of Crows. My main interest in picking up this book finally arose when the next book in the Grishaverse “King of Scars” was announced.
Spoiler
Okay, now this book wasn't anything special. It wasn't dull either but I couldn't help but compare it to Six of Crows every step of the way. Alina is a bit useless in the beginning of the book, falling left and right. Somewhere in the middle when she is travelling on her own is when I started taking a liking to her, but then her friend showed up and I wanted her to get some character development on her own, which she did get I guess, just a tiny bit, after crying through many pages.

There were two instances where I liked Alina. One, when she's travelling alone and talks about being lonely her own life but says this: “I'd been lonely my whole life, but I'd never been truly alone before, and it wasn't nearly as scary as I'd imagined.”
At this point I remember smiling to myself and going thank god! I thought she was going to whine about how lonely and desperate she was for human contact.
Two, when she uses ‘The Cut' in the Shadow Fold. I anticipated that but I didn't think she'd leave all those people in the Fold and run away. Thank the Lord she did that.

From the rest of the cast, I liked Genya a lot. I really liked how in the beginning Genya warned Alina about the Darkling by saying something along the lines of she should be careful of men trying to control her (gotta find the exact line in the book again).

Darkling is freaking 120 years old. Wow, twilight flashbacks. He was definitely out the window as a love interest the minute he announced his age. Also, what the hell kind of a plan is that?

Mal is walking around with a death flag on him so I'm not gonna go get attached to characters who're gonna be so deeeaaad. Six of Crows flashbacks :(

Otherwise, this book was a fast read for me as I didn't get confused by all the Grisha terminology. Now, for my usual list of things I really liked in this book,

• The Second Army
• The kefta the Grisha wore
• Alina and Darkling's powers
• The Cut
• The Shadow Fold
• Genya :)
• The map in the beginning of the book
• The book cover with the stag on it :D (The blue and gold color scheme is marvelous to look at)