Siege and Storm; Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo // My Grandma is Genya

     

Because I read these one after the other, I thought I'd do a combined post.

Can I repeat what gets me so excited about these books? I know I said it (and said it and said it) in my review of Shadow and Bone but:

SLAVIC FANTASY, PEOPLE!

*dances a little dance of glee*

I need more of this. Someone needs to write more slavic fantasy (and not just me). I just looked up "Slavic Fantasy" on Goodreads and there are literally seventeen books shelved under that genre. SEVENTEEN! And seven of them aren't even in English! That means TEN books for us to partake of. Pitiful.
(By the way, the Grisha Trilogy wasn't on there. Shame.)

Apparently, The Ultimate Slavic Fantasy Book is called The Last Wish by Andrzej Sapkowski. Perhaps I should read it.

Anyway, my point is that we need to get more people writing Slavic fantasy. Yes or yes?

So, the fact that Bardugo, with no Slavic background herself, writes such a fantastic trilogy - highly commendable.

And not only does she provide the true feel of Slavic folklore, but also - the story is darn good too!

Let's talk characters again.

The Darkling has become SUCH a well rounded villain. You know what's a sign of a good villain? It's when he thinks that he isn't evil, he thinks that he is good, he's doing the right thing.
You, as the reader, of course, know that he's doing the wrong thing. But in his twisted mind, he can't see that. It makes him so REAL.

Do you know what the biggest debate in Psychology is? (Once you take Psy 101, you're never the same.) It's Nature vs. Nurture. Basically, the question is: what influences us more to become who we are? Is it inborn in our genes? (That's Nature.) Or is it our surroundings as we grow up? (That's Nurture.)
My opinion (because obviously I have a huge voice in the Psychological Department of the World) is that it's a little of both. There's a part of our personality that we're born with, but the other part is molded by the people around us, and our situation in life.

Who the Darkling became is so obviously a result of the Nurture side of things.

His history is so knotted, so tangled, so shadowed, it's not at all surprising that he came out with his morals a bit on the wrong side.

What is interesting about this book is that it's sort of a love-quadrangle, which I haven't encountered before (except for perhaps Shakespeare's Twelfth Night - now that was some love-quadrangle!)
We have the dark, bad boy. We have the sincere, full-hearted boy (Mal - who still wins, in my book).
And we have - well, something in between.
Nicolai is a flippant, jokey sort of fellow, who has never known a day of his life when things didn't go his way. But there's a deeper side to him that gets revealed as the story progresses - one that has some of Mal's beautiful kindness, but one that lack's Mal's humility. Mal has a certain sort of pride, but it's not the obvious kind. Nicolai's pride is obvious and pervading. It's not a bad thing, but it's not a good thing either - pride can be a virtue and a vice at the same time.

As I said, though, Mal wins in my book. He has a purity and goodness that will always send a character into my Fictional Crushes list. I will consistently fall for the good boys. Without fail. (Ahem, Peeta?)

DO YOU REALIZE WHAT MAL DID FOR ALINA? How can you not love him? When you get a guy who is that devoted to you, you don't let him go.

Talking about that - wow what a twist! I was so ready for it to go according to plan (three books, three amplifiers, the fairy-tale formula, and all comes out dandy).
But then Bardugo threw in such an epic twist in Ruin and Rising, and the whole fairy-tale formula fell on its head.

Mindblown.

This ending was quite an epic ending, as endings go.

Oh and if you were wondering about the title of my post, my grandmother both is and isn't Genya. She obviously isn't the character Genya from the books (another spectacular character, by the way. Ugh, just marvelous!). But my grandma's name is, in fact, Genya. Her first name is Eugenia, which in Ukrainian is Evgenia, which shortens to the nickname Genya. It's sort of the Slavic equivalent of Jean.

Cool, huh? :-)

Have you read the Grisha Trilogy? What did you think of that ending? And which (if any) of the three fellows lands on your Fictional Crushes list? If you're into guys, that is.
Spoilers welcome in the comments, just warn ahead of time.

~Sophia

Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo // My Beloved Motherland!

You know, I've always loved the Middle Ages in Western Europe (I was OBSESSED with it as a kid), but Eastern Europe is really my motherland. It's fantastic to finally read some nice Slavic fantasy! I felt right at home in Ravka.

I'm 100% Ukrainian, and I grew up in a household that celebrated all the holidays in the traditional Ukrainian way. I grew up with Ukrainian folktales (lots of talking animals), and a good bunch of Western ones made to sound more Slavic. Snow White is a Western fairy tale, right? My first introduction to it was through this epic Ukrainian picture book:

(The publisher's name is awesome: A-BA-BA-HA-LA-MA-HA. Seriously.)

Anyway, back to Shadow and Bone. Leigh Bardugo's world felt so much like the fantasy Ukraine in my head did when I was told folktales as a kid. Every country or culture in our world has their own "structure" for folktales. You know the classic ones from Western lit: There once was an old king and he had three sons (of course, the youngest one gets the girl. WHY?). There once was princess with an evil stepmother. Etc, etc, etc. 

The Eastern ones generally start like this: There once was an old [very old - like grandparents old] couple who really wanted to have kids - but couldn't. Or: Deep in the forest there lived [insert animal].

And there's usually a Baba Yaga (old witch that lives in a house that stands on chicken feet, like this:)

Creds to LiaSelena's DeviantArt page for this awesome work!

My point is - there are things that are inherent to Slavic folktales, just as there are things that are inherant to Western ones. And Leigh Bardugo makes Shadow and Bone just feel Slavic, even if it doesn't have Baba Yagas and talking animals. There are little things that make it feel so comfortable and homey for someone like me who's been raised with this stuff.

Firstly, the Ravkan words are almost all near-legitimate translations with real Slavic roots. I don't think Leigh Bardugo is at all Slavic (the bio in my book says she was born in Jerusalem), so I highly commend her on going that extra mile and creating a language that feels Slavic, sounds Slavic, but isn't Russian, Ukrainian, Polish or whatever. It's just some Slavic language. THAT'S AWESOME. And a ton of work for someone who isn't even from a Slavic background. WA.

(I found this post where she talks about creating the Ravkan language. I totally picked up on a ton of stuff she talks about in that article!)

By the way, as she mentions in her article, kvas is real:

As she says, in the books it's a stand-in for vodka, but in reality it's not alcoholic. It's fermented rye bread.

Also, kefta is clearly taken from the word kaftan, which is basically a Ravkan kefta. 

 

I love how the words are sort of  the same but not exactly. This gets me SO EXCITED.

Okay, enough about the worldbuilding, which you can clearly see I ADORE. 

On to characters.

I think Mal is inching his way towards a spot my Literary Crushes list. We'll see if the next two books put him on it. I'm sort of hoping they do. :-) The Darkling, on the other hand.... everyone talks about how he's so sexy, so desirable, so yummy. To be honest, he creeps me out. I have no interest whatsoever in bad boys, and don't really see why some people think that they are so attractive - in fact, they scare me. Nice boys all the way!

But as a Character - the Darkling's pretty great. I think it's commendable that he creeps me out so much, since that means he's pretty well written.

Alina is fantastic, and I'm looking forward to seeing her development in the next two novels. 

The writing itself seemed.... simple? No, that's not it. I don't exactly know how to describe it, but let's just say I felt like I whizzed through the book. I don't want it to sound like a bad thing. It's just I felt like the story was just washing over me and I barely gave any effort to actually reading it. Maybe it was just such a contrast to recently-read books like Gone With the Wind. 

Anyway, it was an excellent book and I was SO excited to finally read some Slavic fantasy. I can't wait to read the next two books, especially now with all this hype about Ruin and Rising! I'm feeling so behind.

~Sophia

If you've read Shadow and Bone - what did you think? If you haven't - have you read any other Slavic fantasy, and do you have any recs for me? Or even any other non-Western fantasy - I'd love to read some!