Title: Ruin and Rising (Shadow and Bone #3)
Author: Leigh Bardugo
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy romance
Publisher: MacMillan Publishing Group
Publication Date: 2014
Format: Paperback Print
Length: 417 pages

Rating:

Ruin and Rising was the epic finale of the Shadow and Bone series, and while it took some turns that weren’t how I wanted to see things play out, it was still an extraordinarily entertaining book that I thoroughly enjoyed. Where Siege and Storm was a little slower-paced, and a little more focused on the build of the narrative and the characters, I found Ruin and Rising moved quickly and was complimented by a dense, beautifully crafted plot.

Bardugo is a master storyteller and has a way of making me feel really invested in the story regardless of whether or not it ends how I want it to. When I first started Shadow and Bone, I wasn’t sure whether or not it was going to live up to Barudgo’s adult fantasy series but wow, I loved this universe. The story of Alina Starkov and the Grishaverse was gloriously weaved with political, religious, and magical aspects, and the characters were utterly memorable, for better or for worse. I completely understand the hype around these books now, and consider this one of the strongest YA fantasy series I’ve read yet.

Fair warning: spoilers ahead for anyone who hasn’t read this book or other books in this series.

The Book: Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo

Ruin and Rising begins with Alina in a terribly weak state after her narrow escape from the Darkling. At the end of Siege and Storm, she sacrifices herself through her magic by drawing on Merzost in an attempt to kill both the Darkling and herself. While she manages to bring down the chapel on the Darkling, he survives, but the act does great damage to her. She only managed to survive after Mal returned for her and was aided by the Apparat and his followers, who usher them and the remaining Grisha underground into the church’s network of tunnels and caves.

Having been trapped without access to any form of natural light, Alina has been unable to recover from the fight with the Darkling. Her hair has gone completely white and she remains too weak to do more than walk short distances, let alone summon magic. It’s quickly apparent that the Apparat prefers her in this state, making it easier for him to use her for his own means, which grates endlessly on Alina. Luckily, she is quickly restored to her abilities in a coup hosted by the Grisha, who manage to blast a hole in the ceiling large enough for her to access the sunlight. As Alina recovers her abilities, she and the Grisha form a plan to leave the church tunnels and begin the trek back to the surface, where they hope to join up with Prince Nikolai. Rumours have abounded about Nikolai’s attempts to defy the Darkling, who has placed himself on the Ravkan throne, and Alina believes joining him is their best chance of both mounting a successful resistance and of finding the resources they need to pursue the third and final amplifier.

As the Grisha race to the surface and beyond, reuniting with Nikolai and learning more and more about both the amplifiers and their creator, Morozova, Alina and Mal both begin to learn the price that obtaining this power will cost. Everywhere they go, the Darkling and his host of evil creatures follow, slowly picking away at their numbers and wreaking death and devastation on everyone they know and love. If they have any hope of defeating him and giving Ravka a fighting chance at a future, the toll will be beyond what either of them ever hoped to pay.

The Review

There was so much to this plot, and so much that was revealed after two full books of world-building and story-weaving that it’s difficult to say much without spoiling major aspects (hence the very short plot review above), but I will say that I thought the plot itself was so masterfully executed. I loved how many reveals there were in this book that had things clicking into place for me, and I loved how intricate and balanced those plot aspects were. Even when a reveal happened that had me stunned or devastated, it was so logically aligned with the universe that had been built that you had to just accept it because it made so much sense. I appreciated Bardugo’s ability to do that—to have me so invested in the world that she’d created that even if things didn’t go how I wanted them to, I couldn’t argue with it.

I felt very similarly about the characters, namely Mal and Alina. I’ve said before and I’ll say again, I’ve never really liked Mal, and I felt like he wasn’t the best fit for Alina. That said, there was a lot of redemption for him in this book that made up for some of the crappier aspects of his personality. He still wasn’t a perfect person in the end, no matter how self-sacrificing he wanted to be, but he’d grown a lot and come further—enough that I begrudgingly accepted his ultimate fate.

For Alina, I selfishly would have loved to have seen her become a badass massive power-wielder who, against the very nature of her magic itself, used it reasonably and for good. I see why that couldn’t be, and really the cruelness of it was a sort of balance to the devastatingly awful things she’d been forced to do when she had held the power. The simplicity of her ending was really quite fitting though, especially given how she’d always been a fairly reluctant heroine.

At this point, I would consider Leigh Bardugo an auto-buy author for me. I loved the entire Shadow and Bone series, even the parts that didn’t go how I wanted them to, and really, what better testament to someone’s writing than that? I could read a hundred books about the Grishaverse and never get bored of it, which is exactly what I’ll do by picking up every other book related to this series that Bardugo has written 😊.