I’m just finishing up the sixth book in Bardugo’s Grishaverse series, King of Scars, and I think I found my author-crush.
Actually, at first, I wasn’t sure. I started with Shadow and Bone, and it had pretty much all of the normal YA fantasy tropes – orphans, an average protagonist with a big destiny, unrequited love, then later a love triangle, and magical objects that the protagonist must obtain to save the world from certain doom.
To many, I can see how this could set the stage for some serious eye-rolling, but I actually love tropes when they’re done right. Bardugo uses all these tropes against a backdrop that is stunning, unique, and exhilarating. Instead of a European/medieval-type world, she puts us into a Slavic-type country at war with itself, and instead of just swords and bows, she gives us armies equipped with guns, cannons, and flying ships. She reinvents magic, and instead of mages and wizards, we get Grisha – heartrenders, healers, squallers, inferni, tidemakers, durasts and alkemi.
After the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, I moved onto the Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. And wow. Just WOW. These were wildly different than the first three books. They take place in the city of Ketterdam, where a group of teenagers from different backgrounds – thieves, indentured workers, Grisha, and former soldiers come together for a job that will make them rich beyond their wildest imagination and end up entrenched in a battle with the rich and powerful who run the city.
The characters are great, they have unique backstories, and the writing is moving, the pace is exciting. But what gets me the most was the complexity of the plot. The books are filled with a dizzying amount of twists and turns, and she keeps the readers on their toes from beginning to end. I would love to dive inside the mind of someone that can write a character as clever and tricky as Caz Brekker. She also cracks open so many complex themes in a fresh and tactful way, even some as heavy as prostitution and addiction, which I greatly admire in a writer.
Following the Six of Crows Duology, we are back in Ravka again, with some of my favorite characters from both the Shadow and Bone Trilogy and Six of Crows. So far it does not disappoint. Nicholai was one of my favorite characters in the Shadow and Bone trilogy, and in King of Scars we get to read from his perspective. I’m eating it up. I know I should have waited to write my thoughts on these books until after I finished them, but I really don’t need to. I have every confidence that they aren’t suddenly going to get worse.
Liz Highland 