Shadow and Bone
I had a hard time rating this. It's was so close to being a 5 star book. Don't get me wrong, Shadow and Bone a great read. It just had a few kinks in the middle that bugged me. The beginning of the book was intriguing. My favorite thing about it was the world. It was mysterious, dark and almost a bit creepy. The world had a touch of something different but I just couldn't put my finger on it. This book is what most call "fantasy lite", but I thought the magic was fascinating. This entire book revolved mostly around the Grisha and their magic. Magic played a major role in the wars fought in this world.
I thought the characters were done well. The main characters had a strong believable bond. I connected with them both early in the book. The villains were very interesting as well. I liked one villain as much or maybe even more than the main characters. Having a love/hate relationship with a villain always makes a story better for me.
The plot movement was great until somewhere in the middle of the book. Everything seemed to stop all at once. The wonder and excitement pretty much disappeared. Everything but teenage drama was pushed aside in this portion of the book. At one point I started having flashbacks of Mean Girls. You know the, "I'm gonna laugh and make fun of you in the cafeteria", type of thing. Once that was all over the book went back to being amazingly good. The plot picked up and it was everything that I had hoped it would be.
Shadow and Bone had a lot of things in common with other books that I've read but it stands out on its own to me. I'm already 20% into the next book and loving it so far. This series has really surprised me and I'm so glad I gave it a chance. It's definitely worth a read if like this genre.
