Book Review: Siege and Storm

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Publisher: Henry Holt

Genre: YA fantasy

Pages: 448

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

Synopsis:

“Hunted across the True Sea, haunted by the lives she took on the Fold, Alina must try to make a life with Mal in an unfamiliar land. She finds starting new is not easy while keeping her identity as the Sun Summoner a secret. She can’t outrun her past or her destiny for long.

The Darkling has emerged from the Shadow Fold with a terrifying new power and a dangerous plan that will test the very boundaries of the natural world. With the help of a notorious privateer, Alina returns to the country she abandoned, determined to fight the forces gathering against Ravka. But as her power grows, Alina slips deeper into the Darkling’s game of forbidden magic, and farther away from Mal. Somehow, she will have to choose between her country, her power, and the love she always thought would guide her–or risk losing everything to the oncoming storm.”

This book was… something else. Somehow in the span of this one single book Siege and Storm managed to fix practically everything, and I really mean EVERYTHING, I remember hating about the first book in this trilogy. I never really planned to keep reading the Grisha Trilogy but I decided to give this world another chance because of one character… and now I’ve been left dying for the final book suddenly more attached to the characters and world more than ever.

This review will be mildy spoily about things that occurred during book one, but won’t dive deep into Siege and Storm spoilers. I still feel the pain from the last time I got book spoiled, I’m not about to inflict that pain somewhere else.

As I mentioned, I went into this book for one character… who I ended up loving!! Nikolai Lantsov. He was just as charming as promised and his banter was golden! He’s easily going down as one of my favorite sassy characters and he alone is worth reading this book for if you’re on the fence about it. I so rarely say this about books or characters, but he definitely lived up to the hype.

I wasn’t really a huge fan of Alina or Mal in book one but they’re much more tolerable in book two! Alina is actually a bit more than tolerable, that’s more of how I feel about Mal. I loved seeing Alina develop into a deeper and ultimately more morally gray character. She became someone else over the course of this book and seeing her become darker was interested. I kinda (really, extremely) loved how this changed the mood of the book and shifted the different relationships she had with people. She’s actually scary now, which is a first for her that I can’t wait to see more expansion on!

Mal… my dear buddy Mal… he’s slightly more tolerable. At times I felt like I could actually understand his character and other times I just wanted to scream at him. He’s confusing, moody, unsupportive, and in my opinion probably not the best match for Alina. Sorry not sorry. I am growing to like him more… or umm.. growing to not hate him as much but I still think his character has a lot more work to do before I could ever consider him a character that’s likable to some degree.

The world building and atmosphere in this book expanded remarkably compared to Shadow and Bone. I finally felt like I got a grip on the functions of the world and how the political dance worked. It was beautiful and so unique from a lot of what I read. There really aren’t enough Russia inspired books out there!

The writing in this book was beautiful and easy to fall into. I could read a sentence and easily be transported back into the world. Leigh Bardugo has a gift for writing, there’s absolutely no way to deny that.

All in all I don’t regret picking up this book, it had a surprisingly happy outcome! I never thought I would read the rest of this trilogy but now I can’t pick up book three fast enough.

My final thoughts would have to be… I adore Nikolai.