"You know the problems with heroes and saints, Nikolai? They always end up dead."

Leigh Bardugo is fantastic!
She can spin a story with the best of them!

I love her writing and i love the Grisha world she build. I love that she doesn't really make a huge difference between heroes and villains but rather manages to make the villains understandable and the heroes sometimes very bad!

I really enjoy Alina and how she tries to figure out what she has to do and how she can do it, while also having to figure out all this other stuff with the kingdom, Mal, her powers, other Grisha's and the Darkling, who always seems to be right there in one way or another.

I really like that she struggles. With figuring out what she can do, what she should do, what the right thing is, what everyone expects of her, what she wants....

She struggles to figure out her role, and place and general sense of being and it is all very realistically done in a way that those kinds of struggles are not over dramatized or that it is constantly pointed out or talked about. But that it is just mentioned every now and again, that Alina has to figure stuff out.

I really loved the newly introduced character.

I LOVED Nikolai... he's just GREAT! And he has some of the best lines! He is snarky, sarcastic and can also sit there and take a verbal beating without flinching.

Clearly i love this book. I love the series. And the world. And basically everything about this.

That all being said, there were problems in this book -i am not blinded by my love for the series to not see that. But which book does not have those moments that could have been told differently? Shorter? Better in a way? Or were just not what the reader wanted?

If you can name i book, i am pretty sure that even if you can't see the flaws or problems in it, others will!

I found some of the Darklin/Alina moments a bit overdone, as were many of the Alina/male character moments overall...

i just find it very unrealistic that just because she suddenly has powers everyone can overlook her apparently not very appealing looks -that everyone else always sees and frowns at!- and wants to kiss her and marry her and be unbelievable happy with her the second they see her.

I would love it if that happens. I am all for getting to know a person and not just see their outsides! It would be fantastic if that would be real and people really see someone for who they are and NOT what they look like.

But realistically? Come on! If you are an ugly duckling, no prince is going to want to marry you, even if you are apparently a Saint all of a sudden and maybe one of the two most powerful beings in the kingdom! That is just not what is going to happen in that situation!

Also can i just mention that the slight over dramatization in the relationship between Mal and Alina was not my favorite? I LOVED that Bardugo put a male/female friendship in there and made it seem mostly platonic -there was the initial crush from Alinas side but she got over that!

I would have loved if Bardugo would have just continued on the friendship part between those too and not the relationship part of it.

And not because i want to see Alina with anyone else, i just want to see a book -espacilly a fantasy!- that is completely focused on the fantasy aspects and friendships and not on unnecessary romance!

Sadly this was not it.

And if i did not love the actual story parts and can overlook the unnecessary slightly overdone romance parts this book would have actually gotten 4 stars.

But they weren't too extreme, and kept mostly at the sidelines. So i CAN ignore them and focus on the wonderfully magnificent parts of this book!


I can not wait to pick up the third book and see where this particular part of the Grisha verse will end and what is going to happen.

I can't wait to see what Alina is going to do now, how she will go on. What happened to the others and how they will continue to be in the story or not.

I just can't wait get back into this universe, to those characters and the wonderful writing that just takes me in and keeps me feeling very warm, welcomed and hugged while reading.

And who doesn't love that?