Corder’s Book Corner: Shadow and Bone book review

There are circles of writers who advocate reading bad books. Doing so exposes you to what bad writing looks like, thus helping you avoid it. A small cache of writing insight if you will. Well, I’m fortunate that I found such a cache in Leigh Bardugo’s Young Adult Fantasy, Shadow and Bone.

In this novel, a young girl named Alina learns that she is the Sun Summoner, an individual who wields the power of light. She is a savior and the key to dispelling the wrath of the Shadow Fold, a great swath of darkness that has rived the land of Ravka in two. With her power, she can save the world.

Well, that’s all well and good, but Alina is flatter than a Coca-Cola that’s been left sitting on the kitchen counter since Friday night. The typical Mary Sue protagonist that has appeared time and time again in popular movies and books in the past decade, there seems to be this concept among creators that we want the most basic of protagonists. If I was able to appear in this fictional world, I would give Alina a $10 bill so that she could buy herself a personality. She lacks drive, she lacks character, she is just a feather being tossed by the wind, going wherever the book’s thin-string of a plot takes her.

In the world building of the novel, the author sought to give a Russian atmosphere. The soldiers wear heavy coats and bore rifles, and they drink something called kvas. Fantastic. Bardugo saw something in the real world and tried to reflect it in her own to build a culture for her characters to live in. But as it turns out, this culture lacks filling and sustenance, like biting into a sandwich that is only filled with mayonnaise. For this book, her attempt just didn’t work.

Also lacking substance is the world’s magic system, which is called the “Small Science.” There are a few explanations of how it works, before they sizzle out and leave the reader accepting it as gospel. The Grisha (basically wizards) are the chosen ones that are able to control this magic. Some have the gift, while others don’t, kind of like how some people have a fissured tongue. There’s no rhyme or reason to the magic in my eyes, and though Alina goes through some training in the palace of the kingdom, a dim shadow of Hogwarts where everyone is a snobby teenager, there’s just no appealing color to the magic in this book.

In layman’s terms, this was a very bad book. And it worries me that it has become not only a bestseller, but also a show on Netflix. But in this culture of saturated entertainment, I suppose the masses will gobble up anything that at least tries to show the slightest hint of art, despite the fact that it lacks any real substance. The first book in an entire trilogy that I will never finish, Shadow and Bone is a disappointment that has seared the fabric of my literary mind.