#Not mentioning the fact that they want to kill grisha and end up being ruled by to of them

[demiwizardsoul]

Nina Zenik went from being captured by Fjerdans because they hate people of her kind, to becoming the princess and the future queen of the same people that wanted her dead.

Idk guys, it's a clear exemple of upward mobility to me.

[rcksmith]

Dream a little of me — Kaz Brekker

Resume: One bed and two hearts.

Requests :”Hello, darling! Could I request sleeping with kaz? Imagine or general headcanons, as you like. No nsfw (no need of touching tho, do what you like with it!), just sleeping in the same bed - maybe for the first time. Also bonus points if one of them will have a nightmare👀Have a good night/day, hun!🧚‍♀️🧚‍♀️🧚‍♀️✨✨✨💗💗💗”

“My heart asks for all the angst of touch starved reader falling for Kaz Brekker... 😭😭😭 - 🐕‍🦺”

Couple: Kaz Brekker/ Grisha Fem!Reader

Warnings: swearing, mention of post-traumatic stress, angst, fluff.

Word count: 3k.

A/N: Thank you💖 I hope you guys like.

Normal Rules.

English is not my first language, so I so sorry if have a mistake. Requests are open. Love you❤️

— — — — —

The rain was pouring down in torrents, in a fierce storm that roared into the shadowy forest like a hideous, unearthly animal. Platinum lightning’s streaked the midnight sky and thunder rumbled like as giants footsteps crashing into the ground and shaking the earth. Everything had been orchestrated to work. But nothing could have gone more wrong.

Unfortunately, not even Kaz Brekker's millions of tricks and plans could defeat the force of nature. And even you, an Infernal Entherealki, hadn't mastered the art of controlling fire or keeping warm while under a torrent of icy, biting cold water.

Your teeth started chattering, your lips turned purple, and you wondered if you could run another inch. Your muscles felt like stones and for someone who had lived with the heat of the flames his whole life, being under freezing water was extremely painful. But Kaz wouldn't let you stop. And you, as excruciating as the pain was, didn't want to stop either. The pain was strong but the desire not to let him down was more.

The two of you part of the plan that night was to go through the forest with the diamonds in pockets and find the rest of the Crows on the other side. You two would have to spend the night in that place. But all of Brekker's machinations were washed away by the treacherous and atrocious rain.

The only alternative was to run. Run to the direction where there was a small civilization and pray to find an inn or not die of hypothermia.

The angry drops of icy water were enough to steal Kaz's breath. Not because the cold was unbearable, but because his own demons, his past, were ghosts that gripped his ankles like monsters from horror stories. He didn't feel the rain, didn't feel the biting wind, Kaz just felt the sensation of the freezing, oppressive ocean drowning him. And for a second, when he looked at the small strip of fur on he wrist that wasn't hidden by his glove and coat, he swore he saw Jordie's dead skin in place of his.

He had to get out of there. But when the storm started, and Kaz run his eyes at you, your face wet from the rain, your skin constantly whipped by the cold droplets, and your cheeks extremely red from the cold, it made him gasp in a very different way. Blood pooled in your cheeks. Pulsing. Alive. He had to get you out of there.

Finding hiding places was one of his specialties, and he focused his mind entirely on it. When an inn came into view, a small relief rumbled in both of you. And Kaz looked in your direction to make sure you were okay. Alive.

As the receptionist gave the key from the last spare room to the two of you, Kaz couldn't help but feel that there was no longer any heat pulsing in your body. That made him feel miserable.

The night was cold. Unusually cool for the time of year.

"I don't think it's a good idea to carry out a robbery like that in these climatic temperatures." Inej said, walking down the stairs after Kaz "One of the Dregs caught a serious cold too while you were away."

Kaz had to be away for two days to sort out some matters of his own. Check some ship ports and finding out the weaknesses of some new merchants. And as much as he ordered his thoughts to focus solely on that purpose, he found himself daydreaming at certain times about…

"It got very serious after a few hours." Inej completed.

Kaz felt a trickle of worry trace his veins, tighten his throat But it wasn't for some bruteman of his Dregs. His source of concern was more serious, deeper, and for someone he didn't want to think about too much. Even though he told himself to keep every nerve in his body under control, in the end he was Kaz Brekker, he couldn't help but notice he picked up his pace to get faster to the live room that was strictly reserved for the Crows.

And when he walked in, following by Inej, the tree branches hit the windows, blown by the wind, tinkling. The cold was oppressive and biting, but not enough to stop Jesper from playing cards with Wylan, nor enough for Nina not to eat her candy and listen to Matthias tell of his people's legends. But the eyes of Kaz, that treacherous and treacherous organ, ran to you first. Magnetically, inevitably.

And he felt like he could breathe again.

The sight of you sitting on the black velvet sofa, with a book in your hands and your legs stretched out on the padded stool in front of you, calmed Kaz's heartbeat as nothing had ever done.

As much as he denies, in those two days his mind has swarmed over you more often than he thought wise. Brekker liked to justify that action with the fact that you were part of the gang. As close and important as Jesper or Inej. It was normal for him to be worried about the Dregs.

But why did he only see you? Why did the questions about your well-being and comfort stood out so much from any other concerns with others?

It was you. Always late at night, when Brekker was a sigh away from sleep. You were what someone he was thinking.

"Who is alive always appears." Nina announced he arrival and Kaz was pulled out of his reverie.

"Did you kill anyone these two days?" Jesper placed a letter on the table and Inej sat beside Nina.

Kaz left his hat on one of the dark marble tables. “Does it matter?"

There were other seats available in the room. A leather armchair next to the burning fireplace - Brekker were sure that you was controlling the temperature - an extra chair around the table where Jesper and Wylan were play, and a small divan beside Matthias. But Kaz sat beside you on the couch.

You marked the page with your finger, lowering the book gently. He didn't need to see the cover to know what it was. It was a romance clichéd eighteenth-century. He had given it to you before he left.

"Everything worked?" You smiled and Kaz had the feeling that he wanted to memorize that smile in a painting to always appreciate it.

"And doesn't always do?"

Even with the biting cold that wasn't stopped by the fireplace, Brekker could feel the heat from your body emanating, like a delicious temptation. You were always so hot. Bathed in the sun's rays. He didn't know if infernal grisha like you gave off so much heat too, because it was impossible for that to be human. Were so intense...delicious. Even with multiple layers of clothing, if Kaz approached you he could feel the warmth of a tropical pirate island.

Was that why he always unconsciously sat beside you? Why did you radiate so much causticity that it made Kaz forget about the ocean's cold? Why were you like a piece of life and Kaz felt dead for a long time?

Or was it because, heat or not, you were the only thing worth being around?

All the questions were too disturbing. And Kaz Brekker didn't want to know the answer.

Now, even climbing the stairs to the room beside you, Kaz couldn't feel anything radiating from you body. Just the cold. And he hated it with every force of his being.

You're not made to take the rain, felling deadly cold, or turn your lips a bluish hue.You were not made to be cold as a corpse, with muscles stiff and sore like a dead. You were not made to look like Jordie. You were meant to be alive. To look alive. Exhale the heat of the most ardent fire and heat a room just with your presence. You were meant to scare off Kaz's winter with your summer.

For a second, Kaz wanted to hug you to give you the warmth of his own body.

You felt exhausted. The remnants of what you once day were. Every inch of your body protested, aching and tearing at muscles. The cold, sharp water did you no good. You didn't know if it was were something of your species or a trait unique to you. But it didn't do any good to you. You hated looking so miserable in that appearance, especially in front of the one man you always wanted to look beautiful to. But at that moment you were in too much pain to worry so much about it.

As soon as Kaz had put the key in the doorknob, his gloved fingers stiff from the cold, what you expected to find was a cozy room, promising a heat shower and a good, well-deserved night's sleep. But that wasn't it. You stared at the wide double bed with white sheets, perplexed. Shock competed with your pain and put your brain to work, and all your breath lurked in throat as your realized the situation.

Oh my fucking God.

You didn't have to look at Kaz to feel his entire body be rigid, in a way far more potent than the effects the rain had caused. As if the prospect of sleeping next to you was more whorse than dying of hypothermia.

You closed your expression. Half because your mood was already bad and half because the rejection was brutal. You didn't expect your passionate feelings for Kaz to be returned, nor did you expect him to feel the same longing to be close to you as you felt for him. But no woman wanted to see that a man would rather die of hypothermia than share a bed with her. Even more if he was a man she was in love with.

You entered in room first, the pain in your body clouding your thoughts.

"Do you mind if I shower first?"

Your voice was weak, and you didn't have the heart to look at Kaz. He hissed a “no” that hung in the air, and that was the last thing you heard before closing yourself in the bathroom.

His heart was beating eerily fast in his chest. As loud as the thunder outside and as unsettling as the chill of rain. His breath began to burn heavily in his throat, and suddenly his entire body was fully aware of the situation.

One bed.

Even when he took the diamonds out of his pocket and placed them on a small table, even when you came out of the bathroom and he walked in, even as he basked in the hot water, his heart still pounded wildly. Like a generator.

Kaz Brekker liked puzzles, challenges. Of things he could unravel and understand. Piece by piece. He played to win and to cheat, and the world knelt at his feet before the insight of his mind. Still, he didn't know what to do. You were like a fascinating and maddening riddle. The one thing that, no matter how hard Kaz tried, could never unravel yours mysteries. Or maybe, just, what he would never be able to do was unravel what he felling whenever he was by your side.

His heartbeat grew stronger.

Brekker remembered every deck of cards, every card played. He could keep up with the distribution of up to five decks, unlock any lock, and devise the most insane plans. But he couldn't stop the way his soul trembled whenever he laid eyes on you.

In those moments, when you looked at Kaz like he was someone much better than he actually was, Kaz wanted to be good. He wanted to be born again to become a damn decent man. For you. He wished he didn't have his demons and erase his past. Because that way, when the sun's rays hit your face and you were close enough for your scent of happiness to flood his senses, Kaz wouldn't back down. He would lean down and seal his lips in yours with the promise of a glorious future.

His heart beat faster.

Why did he feel that his whole life was always suspended whenever he were away from you? And why did he have the feeling his life could change forever if he walked out that door?

Kaz turned off the shower. The heart running like a horse. He fished out the towel and wrapped it around his waist, finding a small hamper that held neat, folded pajamas for guests. He was surprised he didn't notice you in those pajamas. You made him lose focus.

As soon as he dressed and walked out of the bathroom, his eyes immediately went to your figure. Sitting on the bed, your legs under the covers, your hands clasped together in a cupped shape with a small, flare of fire burning in the center.

You looked up at Kaz. “I managed to do something to warm you up.”

The phrase was: No for warm me up. No for warm us up. For warm you up.

Kaz lost his breath and his soul trembled. The air felt different since he stepped out of the shower, not just from the recent gust of heat. But there was something else, something lyrical, pink and lush. Something...beautiful. He did not say anything. First because he didn't trust his own words and second because he didn't know what to say. He sat beside you, a considerable distance away, but this time his fear was that you would hear the loud, racing beat of his heart.

You turned gently towards him, reaching out your hands towards him, not noticing how his hands trembled as they stretched under the hot flame. Kaz swallowed hard.

He knew how weak and drained you were, but he also knew you were aware that he loathed cold. Hated icy water. You didn't know the depth of his traumas, but the fact that you cared to the point that you were willing to use your last shred of strength to end his torment was something that reverberated in his soul.

You two didn't say anything else after that. After Kaz removed his hands from the flame, you understood that as the end of your two interactions. You two shared a mutual answer that neither would sleep on the floor. You two were adults and in no condition to be lashed by any colder.

The night moon bathed the dark room with lights in distilled silver, almost flickering through the windswept tree branches. You were back-to-back, blankets pulled up to your shoulders, breathing gently quickened. As exhausted as you two were, neither of you could sleep.

Suddenly, the whole atmosphere in room seemed to change. Like a private, enchanted piece of the world. The wind howled softly, on a calm note. The rain was still falling in torrents, but now it seemed to be adopted in a passionate tone. As if it had fulfilled its purpose and now hovered in the world with a romantic veil of water. Stars shining bright above the bedroom window, glittering like hundreds of tiny diamonds, accompanied by moonlight. Although the light was dim, it seemed to capture the lyrical essence, seem to whisper “Dream a little dream of me.”

Everything felt different, like the two of you had entered a rift in the world. A part inhabited romance, pure magic, love.

Your soul shivered, and as much as you could never prove it, you felt that Kaz's soul shivered too. Your breath hitched, burning in lungs, your body seized by a caustic tingle that snaked through every inch.

You didn't know why, but your body shifted gently on the bed, turning slightly towards the ceiling. The racing pulse in your veins. A second felt like an eternity. Kaz's body moved too, and you knew, just knew, that he was looking at the ceiling too.

Two hearts beating in the same time. Synchronized. And, by some magic or deity, you two knew that your heartbeat would never again beat another way. Always connected.

Your body moved a little more, now on belly up. And Kaz's seemed to do the same move, even without seeing you or your movements. His chest rising and falling with intensity. The rain calmed outside, turning the symphony of droplets hitting the roof into mysterious, passionate music. As if the world were plotting a whispering favor for you two.

Kaz could feel your body heat radiating once more, grazing his skin with rays of sunlight. Everything in that bedroom became poignant and intense and lyrical, inflicting sensations on him that Kaz never thought existed before. Later, it would be a shock for him to see that he was at the mercy of his own passions. Overcome by sensations that robbed him of control of his body. Later he would think about it. Later.

His soul tingled, sending gusts of heat from the inside out. The feeling was that, after 28 years of deep sleep, he had awakened. Awake. Alive.

His body moved once more, now completely on belly up. Kaz didn't have to look at you to know that you too had placed yourself in the same position. It was as if he felt the movements of your soul. His pulse was racing now, hot and boiling in his blood. And Kaz wondered if all the money in the world would bring half the sensations he was feeling right now.

What was he so afraid all this time? That question echoed through all the corridors of his soul. And Brekker feared for the answer. What kept him from having everything he craved?

Money? Pekka? Jordie's ghost and the cold ocean? Kaz feared never touching you any more than he feared his demons? Was that why he always walked away from you? Why was wanting to slide his fingers into your hot skin and not being able to fell you, be worse than any sensation he'd ever felt? Because, maybe, admitting it can change everything?

His breath hitched.

Would it be worse to be alone for the rest of his life? Doomed and cursing to a fate of revenge, death and red hate? Or, even worse for his heart, finding a girl with lovely eyes, sunny smiles and the smell of happiness? A girl that made him laugh, come out of his hiding. You. What do he will do with that? What if you open up the door that he can't close it? And If when you hold he and his heart is set in motion?

Would that be so bad? No.

His body became very aware of the approximation it was on to your. Your heat radiating into his. For some reason, Kaz was sure you was in the same condition as he was. Sharing the same feelings. The same passion hidden for so long.

Kaz should have thought of his brother, of revenge against Pekka Rollins, of the cold of the ocean. He should have weighed of his own traumas. Instead, he thought: What if I get a little closer?

The result of this was his fingertips brushing yours. And he knew the exact moment your heart sped up even more. Because his followed the same beat. Maybe following yours for the rest of his life.

You brought your eyes to him, calmly, as if that moment might disintegrate. and the world seemed suspended in that moment. Kaz slid his eyes to you as well, sharing sensations and emotions that didn't need to be put into words. It was all there, in the gaze.

His fingers crept higher, going to your hand, and plunging his touch - and his soul - into that contact. All your heat was too strong. Too intense. Doing Kaz wouldn't be able to think or feel, for the first few minutes, about anything but light, heat, summer and…happiness.

That's when you gave him a shaky, emotional smile. I would do anything for you. That's what that smile said. And Kaz answered, his hand tight with yours before letting go. Me too.

- -

As the sun's rays, shy and buttery, flooded the bedroom in soft color, Kaz's eyelids fluttered. The sound of birds reached his ears, and the scent of flowers and happiness invaded his nose.

It was nothing like waking up in Ketterdam.

That thought back him to reality. A reality in which he had stolen many diamonds, taken the rain and had to share the calm. A reality where Kaz Brekker touched you.

You.

Kaz opened his eyes immediately, his heart racing again. He looked frantically around the room, past the simple furniture, the closed bathroom door, the window where the light came in, and then looked to his side on the bed. That's when he realized what position he was in.

His soul heated up.

You had your back to him, your hair spread out on the white pillow, your back showing by your pajama top, your shoulder rising and falling softly with your resonant breathing. You were close. Very close. And Kaz finds, perplexed, that he is facing you. One arm rests around your waist, over the thick blankets, in an intimate and…romantic gesture.

He lost his breath. His warm, hope-shining soul whispered to him: what if it was like this every day? What if he woke up with you by his side forever? What if in time he learned to be a decent man? Trying to be normal?

Would Kaz do this for you?

You shifted in bed, turning onto his side, front for him, snuggling deeper under his touch and moving closer, as if Kaz were your oasis in the desert. No skin was actually touching, your breath hit his warm chest, and if Kaz lowered his lips even further, he could feel your lips on his.

Yes. He would.

[imkylotrash]

Till Forever Falls Apart

Pairing: Kaz Brekker x reader

Request: Could I have reader x Kaz Brekker with this prompt: "We're not just friends and you fucking know it." Anonymous

Tagging: @bitchwhytho @music-of-melody @shadowhuntyi @alice-the-nerd

"Remember when you first came to me? You couldn't even remove your gloves," you say letting your fingers trace an invisible pattern on his chest. He's lying right next to you in bed wearing nothing except undergarments, and he's not terrified. It's your best work yet.

"I remember. You had quite high prices for a Grisha in hiding." He'd come in the dead of night demanding your services as a Heartrender. You'd just opened up shop under the cover of being a healer that could help with things such as fears or heartache. Kaz wanted you to cure him of his haphephobia. He's so calm now as your hand comes to rest on his stomach.

"I just know what I'm worth," you sigh feeling more than content. You had a very strict rule not to get involved with clients, but Kaz was different from the day you met him. His progress had been slow and painful and somewhere in the middle of all that chaos, you'd found yourself developing feelings for the leader of the Crows. Now, he came by whenever he wasn't working a job. You know it had surprised him just how addicting it can be to be able to touch someone when you've lived almost an entire life without it.

"Do you think you'd ever go back?" You don't have to ask what he's talking about. There's only one place you could go back to, but you can't in good consciousness return to the Little Palace when you know General Kirigan is in charge. You won't use your powers as a Heartrender to protect his interests, which is the very reason you're in hiding now. You don't leave the Little Palace unless it's in a body bag or in the dead of night.

"No. I'm done being a servant. I deserve my own life." He kisses the top of your head and it tells you more than he could ever express with words. You know you're not an official item, but you're both in too deep at this point. You're his, and he's yours. You'd never be able to bring yourself to leave him.

"I have to go, but I'll be back later tonight." Kaz slowly gets dressed allowing you to admire his frame in the light of the candles. It makes you want to pull him back to bed and do things best not mentioned.

"Hurry back." It's your equivalent to saying you'll miss him. Neither of you are good at expressing your feelings but there are many ways to show it without saying the words directly.

"Always." And Kaz keeps his promise. He returns later that night but he's brought company. You're no stranger to his Crows, but you're not sure how you feel about him bringing them here. You never bring anyone here to make sure you have a safe space, and now two people you don't necessarily trust know where you hide.

"What's going on?" you ask already on alert. The look in Kaz' eyes tells you he doesn't want to be here like this yet he's still standing here with two others behind him.

"This is my friend Y/N. They're a Heartrender."

"Oh, Kazzie. I didn't know you knew this sort of company," Jesper teases and you feel like showing him just what kind of company you are. But it's not enough to distract you from the fact that Kaz just introduced you as his friend. As if he wasn't in your bed just hours ago. He doesn't miss the change in your expression but refrains from commenting on it.

"So, you need a Heartrender?" You'll table the discussion for now, but Kaz isn't out of the woods. He's just lucky you're good at being professional.

"Well..." Kaz starts explaining with the casual interruption from Jesper while Inej stays completely quiet. She's watching your every move, and you can't decide if she's intrigued by you or scared of you. Heartrenders really get a bad reputation because of what you can choose to do with your powers. You've been able to kill people since you were 10, but you've never used your powers to do so - only disable.

"Are you in?" Kaz asks but of course, you are. You could never deny Kaz. But your hands are shaking when he leaves with his Crows only to return half an hour later. You don't understand why he's putting such an effort into hiding his relationship with you.

"Hey," he says resting a hand on your shoulder, but you pull away. You don't want to be touched by him right now, which also serves as a horrible punishment to Kaz. He's gotten so used to touching you that he feels something pulling at his heartstrings when he's denied it.

"Apparently, we're just friends. I don't do that with my friends." Your ego is hurt, and you're ready to take it out on Kaz.

"What did you want me to say? We are friends, aren't we?" he asks, but you're not letting him off the hook. You want him to admit that you have something more than a friendship.

“We’re not just friends and you fucking know it.” You touch his cheek knowing he won’t recoil - not from you, never from you.

“I can touch you when no one else can. It’s an insult to us to pretend I’m just a friend.” He closes his eyes taking a second just to enjoy the feeling of skin against skin.

"What would you have me say? That I love you? Because I do, you know I do. I'd go to the ends of the world with you if you asked." His eyes fixate you and urging you to believe what he's saying.

"That's exactly what I want you to say."

[peachcitt]

shadow and bone netflix series analysis

what up besties i said as a joke that i wanted to do an analysis post on the changes made in the s&b netflix series from the grishaverse books, and then i realized i wasn't joking and that i actually wanted to do that

it's finals season, i am an undergraduate english major, i have had about five hours of sleep within the past forty eight hours, and believe it or not i am doing this analysis as a fun reward for finishing a research paper. i am putting this out here for you so you can decide if these are the kinds of vibes you want right now.

structure of the analysis will be vaguely as follows:

changes made, in chronological order (or as best as chronology i can do under the circumstances and doing absolutely zero fact checking)

analysis of change when looking at the themes of the books which will include my personal feelings

personal theories (if any) derived from the change for the trajectory of the netflix series

so, like, long post warning. also spoiler warning for the netflix series as well as probably most, if not all, grishaverse books

now let's get this baby started

alina's appearance and shu heritage

so the series starts right off the bat acknowledging alina's shu appearance and the in-world racism and prejudice she's experienced because of it, which was not in the books. however i found alina's shu appearance to be completely in line with the book's themes. alina was already isolated at keramzin and the army because of her sickliness, and she's isolated at the little palace because of her power and her awkwardness. so purposefully making her shu was, i felt, a nice world-building decision as well as a new and interesting layer to her character. also, it's always nice to see diversity in media, so i have literally no qualms with this change

in terms of the rest of the series, the grishaverse is a very politically-motivated story. there's a lot of in-universe politics that happens in the shadow and bone trilogy and especially in the king of scars duology, and i think if the series chooses to extend into/include the king of scars duology story (which, i really hope it will), alina being shu (or at least part shu) will be very interesting to see considering king of scars and rule of wolves deal with negotiations and treaties with shu han. i think also having alina be shu and someone who has experienced countless amounts of in-world racism become a saint, seeing how she and the rest of ravka navigate her identity and identity politics will be really interesting. generally speaking, i just really hope the later parts of the series really delve into alina's identity, what it means to be a saint and also "look like the enemy," and the ravkan people's mixed feelings about her

alina's sickliness/childhood relationship with mal

in the books, alina is described as thin, always having trouble sleeping, hardly ever hungry, and sickly looking because, as we learn later, of her constantly unconsciously repressing her grisha abilities. this is part of the reason she's isolated at keramzin in the books; she's sickly and awkward and no one bothers with her except mal - because they're the same age and mal is strong enough to defend her from the older orphans at keramzin. however, the show doesn't really delve into the effects of what suppressing her abilities do to her except for a few offhand lines (alina angrily saying "im never that sick" when mal suggests she say she's stick to stop from going into the fold, mentions of her larger appetite when they're on the run in the woods). instead, the show kind of flips alina and mal's childhood personalities; mal is depicted as shy and easily picked on, and alina is the protector.

i'll just say it: this change fucks so hard. i love it. i think it says such wonderful things about their characters, and i like that alina begins the series as someone incapable of turning a blind eye to bullies and someone who cares very fiercely for the people she loves (not that that isn't the case in the books - i just think this change does a great job of looking directly at it in the way that shows have to). i think it's easy to root for her, and it's easy to see how she will become a saint to the people. in addition to that, i love what this is saying about alina and mal's characters and how they grow up; that separation from alina caused mal to have to face his own problems head on in traditionally masculine ways (because that was what ana kuya criticizes him in the show for; for always running from fights and being too soft, and i think it's really telling that our first view of mal as a kid, im pretty sure, is gingerly holding a bunny which portrays feminine caregiving and then we jump cut to mal fighting in a dirty boxing ring in the first army, something gritty and masculine). masculine ways that he had to be indoctrinated into and that may not actually be in his natural disposition.

meanwhile, separation from mal meant alina no longer had to be a dominant protector, and she does not connect with anyone in the first army as strongly as she connected with mal, so she doesn't really feel the need to be as aggressive as she was as a child. however, you can see that quiet protectiveness spark up at times - notably when people other than herself are picked on, such as at the food line when she claims not to know the others in the cartography unit so they don't get penalized along with her. i do wish, however, elements of her sickliness had been emphasized a little more in the show because of grisha theory, which i will talk about in another section.

first entry into the fold

okay i will be honest. this change is probably the one that scared me the most when seeing it in the trailers, and i am kind of still iffy on it now. in the books, alina's first journey into the fold and the inciting moment for the entire series is just luck and orders. everyone in the first army has to go through the fold at some point, and it just so happens to be alina and mal's time to go through. however, in the show alina is not initially assigned to go into the fold, but mal is, and alina goes out of her way to make sure that she gets on the skiff so that mal won't have to go alone/without her. there's this level of 'choice' (or at least the illusion of it) in the show in terms of alina and mal getting onto the skiff and going into the fold; at one point or the other they both try to tell the other not to get on the skiff and just choose something else.

the thing that irks me the most is alina's stubborn "i'll make it" line that she tells mal after she's on the skiff. it screams 'fantasy dystopian protagonist' (divergent is the first to come to mind for some reason) in a way that alina never comes across in the books. alina never chooses to make her life more difficult - she's always given two terrible options and has to take the option that fits with her morals or her perception of the power she needs to surivive and win the fight. but i know the only reason alina goes out of her way to get on the skiff is because she's separated from mal, which aligns nicely with the protective nature the show has inscribed on her.

the thing that redeems this change for me is that when alina tries to get just herself onto the skiff (by burning the maps to ensure that she has a purpose there), she ends up endangering the lives of her entire cartography unit. this keeps with the theme of a whole lot of alina's later decisions throughout the books affecting so many more people than just her, and i like that this is a lesson that she learns very early on. this change also seems to be a trade out for the final entering-the-fold scene, but i'll talk about that later.

alexei

here he is, the lynchpin himself. in the books, alexei is dry and rude in a funny way with alina, and they have this really great banter at the beginning of the novel, and then he's, like, the first to get carried off by volcra. very harrowing in the book, i loved it. in the show, alexei's character is a little (a lot) different - he's naive and blunt in a silly way, and he very obviously has a crush on alina. instead of being carried off by volcra in the show, though, he jumps off the skiff and runs blind into the fold - committing what we think at the time is an act of suicide - which was extremely harrowing to see in a completely different way, and i loved it. even if they changed alexei's personality i still love him (and his death) dearly

so as previously mentioned, alexei acts as the lynchpin between the six of crows plot and the shadow and bone plot; he manages to escape the fold alive, and makes it all the way to ketterdam to tell a select few people the legendary sun summoner is alive WHICH. okay ive just decided that's my next topic. anyway back to alexei.

his death in ketterdam is awful because of the personality change, which is why i don't mind missing bitchy alexei from the book; his hopeful little "if i tell you, you'll set me free?" that pulls at your heart and also tells you immediately that he is going to die as soon as he tells everyone what he say is done so well. i also like that through treatment of alexei, we get some characterization of the crows; inej immediately gives him water and glares at the mercher in quiet rage on his cruel treatment, kaz doesn't flinch when alexei is killed but inej and jesper do. i also thought it was interesting to have the mercher (dreeson was his name i believe) to be the one to get his hands 'dirty' and actually be the one to shoot alexei because in six of crows, there is always the sense that the merchers are cruel and conniving, but that they very carefully keep the death of the poor and the grisha off their own hands. im wondering if this hands-on killing is a dreeson-specific trait, or if this more hands-on cruelty will be explored more in other mercher characters we meet, like van eck.

sun summoner legend

this change is so?? i don't really know what to think of it. narratively, it makes sense in the show to have this legend be in place so that alina's importance is immediately recognized by people across the different countries.

however in the books, no one really expected alina. her presence wasn't foretold or divine (at first) or fate in any way. she became a saint because i think in part people weren't expecting her, and once they saw what she could do, they wanted to believe in her abilities so bad they made her divine. this change was also weird to me having just finished rule of wolves where zoya (i think) reflects on amazing things that have happened throughout the story and she notes that alina was not some sort of legend that people were expecting - none of what happened was. everything that happened from alina to nina's miracles in king of scars to zoya's expanded abilities by the end of rule of wolves to the "age of saints." all of those things were just chance people being in chance situations that all slid together in a strange, amazing coincidence. they got lucky.

and i think, at the center of the books, is this kind of purposeful disillusionment of the saints and religion, what with the main character of the original trilogy literally becoming a saint and yet never truly feeling saint-ly or being perfectly divine. the sun summoner legend the show brings up seems to depart from this. it'll be interesting to see what the show does with the legend and how alina feels about it as she fulfills it, and im honestly hoping that we'll find out later in the series that the legend was actually just some poor guy a few hundred years ago making something up to give people hope.

the crows timeline/characterization

in the books, the six of crowd ice court heist happens three years after the events of the final book of the shadow and bone trilogy. but obviously the timelines are smushed together for the show to create a new and different direction for their story and also, as we see at the end of the season, a new and different direction for alina's story as well

ive also seen bardugo say that because of the converging time lines, the grishaverse story will not take seven seasons (one season per book in the grishaverse) to get through. for this reason, im thinking that the parem story/ice court heist will begin if/when we get season 2. given that parem is a big part of kos/row, i see a crows and nikolai interaction happening in season 2 that sparks a beginning discussion on parem.

but back to the crows characterization! the crows are completely in character for me in almost every way, and i found the interactions between kaz, inej, and jesper to be very in character. however kaz's plan to capture alina doesn't work out almost at all which is something that he definitely wouldn't have let happen in the books. im chalking this up to the converging timelines - these crows are baby crows. they're young, a little less experienced, and they haven't gotten their groove on heists (and they don't have the rest of their crew) yet. but i anticipate seeing more crows-classic successful heists in season 2.

there are a couple of things i want to talk about each crow, so it's subtopic time

nina and matthias

perfect. their interactions were almost always word-for-word from the book. i can't remember if matthias had actually been the one to actually catch nina in the book, but if not, then it was a nice touch. it was interesting to see that both of them were so willing to be traitors of their country for each other in the show, because even when they're in a romantic relationship outside of fjerda and ravka in the book, they struggle with even the idea of betraying their country.

i like how they changed nina and matthias' "escape" from fjerda to ravka, and how nina explicitly betrayed grisha she knew to their faces. im interested to see how they'll integrate her back into the second army, or if they even will do that. also, i like that fedyor slowed matthias' heart to make him pass out before he sees the other grisha, so it was easy to understand how matthias could've thought it was nina deceiving him all along. their confrontation in the boat was (chef's kiss), and the horror on nina's face as she realized that this situation she put him in won't be as easily solvable as she thought was just wonderful.

jesper

perfect. i love him. and the coy little hints that he's a fabrikator were so good. also the line in the very beginning where he asks for a demo man, which foreshadows wylan was very nice. the only thing out of character is one time kaz asks him to be a distraction and show jesper claims that being a handsome distraction is not part of his talents. it literally is, why did they make him lie.

inej

literally so so good. i love that we meet her while she still has her oath not to take lives; we get to see her develop and learn that sometimes death is necessary, but that she still isn't yet comfortable with killing. on some level, she never will be, and i think that was a perfect place to start her character. however, i am confused about the show giving her a brother. where is he. is he going to be important?? why is he here???? i can't even make any solid predictions about him because inej having a brother came straight out of fucking left field. here's one flimsy prediction based on nothing at all: inej's brother is grisha and is an indentured servant. may also be involved in the parem plot, or works at the white rose where nina will befriend him and connect with the rest of the six because of him. who fucking knows

kaz

i already kind of went over their disaster plan that still somehow worked out for him, but i love literally everything else they did with kaz. the refusal to show his bare hands was literally art!! we got that tease in the first episode and the camera pans up as soon as the gloves come off. that was perfection - as well as the intimacy and trust portrayed between kaz and inej without them ever touching. i also loved the hints and nudges for his story with pekka - the way he always says his name with obvious distaste, and when we see him interact with pekka for the first time on screen. how he asks if they've ever made a deal before and pekka just goes "nah" and kaz just glares at him. perfect. and i also think the show really leaned in to the soft parts of kaz that inej sees in him, especially when he basically said she (and jesper) meant more to him than any saint?? oh my GOD. i kind of like this honest departure from kaz's book "greed is my god edgy edgy blah blah" especially when he's afraid he'll lose inej. i also think it'd be funny if we hear kaz say "greed is my god" and be edgy about it with us AND inej knowing that is superficial because of what he told her. that would be hilarious.

pekka, tante heleen, per haskell

these three aren't part of the six, but they are part of the original six of crows story and i still wanted to talk about my opinions on them, so they're going here.

i fucking loved pekka, how ruthless he was, and his irish accent. that was wonderful. because of how fucking hands-on and brutal he was, though, i wonder if they're going to keep the jakob hertzoon piece of kaz's origin story the same, because this pekka was so good at being violent that it was hard to picture him even pretending to be a benevolent benefactor to orphans. he is a dilf, though. i am not afraid to admit that.

my only problem with tante heleen is that her actress looked too nice. like she might bake me cookies and offer me a ride home from school. total milf as well but not in the scary sexy way that she was in the books. she had smile lines, she was so dainty, she seemed so genuine. i want to see her be a little more cruel.

per haskell, the actual gang leader of the crows, is not in the show at all. it seems as though the show made kaz the official boss of the crows while he is only second in command in the book. this makes me wonder how they'll handle or if they'll even include that fucking awesome scene in crooked kingdom of kaz earning the gang's trust over haskell. it would be weird to introduce per haskell in season 2 when he wasn't even mentioned in season 1, but it wouldn't be altogether terrible considering the crows spent very little time in ketterdam this season. however, this makes me wonder if, when kaz was away on his little saint pilgrimage (i am calling it that specifically because i know it would piss him off) someone else stepped in as "boss" of the crows. in the show, kaz also leverages the deed of the crow club in order to be able to take inej with him, and presumably the jewels alina gives him will solve that problem, but what would happen if any of the crows find out he made that deal? would he still have to earn the gang's trust back in a show of power and respect like in crooked kingdom? much to think about.

mal

back to the shadow and bone story, ive already briefly (not really briefly) gone over mal characterization alongside alina, but i want to mention how the show includes his perspective alongside alina's and how important that is. the shadow and bone trilogy is told entirely from alina's perspective, and alina is in some ways an unreliable narrator. she tends to think of her relationships and feelings as one sided unless her friend/love interest is looking her in the eye and telling her exactly how they feel about her. the one exception is genya, and that sort of bites her in the ass until it doesn't, but i digress. the point is, the only mal perspective we get in the books is alina's perception of mal, and the bonus content of the "lost" letter he'd written to her while looking for the stag in fjerda. granted, that letter says a lot about mal and how he feels about alina, so if you didn't take the time to read the letter when reading the book, chances are you weren't so hot on mal unless you have sexy critical reading skills like me (or just really love the childhood best friends to lovers trope).

getting all the gritty, messy details of how hard mal is trying to get back to alina in the show makes him so much more of a sympathetic character than he may have seemed at first glance for the majority of shadow and bone from alina's perspective. the show really stresses that the bond alina and mal have is mutual and powerful, and i think that's fucking perfect, actually.

this point was really driven home during the episode we see that mal has a matching scar on his palm that is related to alina, just like how alina has a mal-related scar on her palm. that scene in the brig was so good, especially when they ask each other what they're in for, and alina says "the usual," and after a pause, mal replies "the usual" as well. he could be lying because he knows she would feel bad if she was the reason he chose to stir trouble to go to the brig, but he could also be saying that he usually actively chooses to be sent to the brig for defending alina or because alina is usually already there and he wants to be with her. knowing that and then seeing alina have the scar on her palm erased was. fucking devastating (in a good-ish way), and im kind of hoping alina either chooses to have the tailoring removed so she can see the scar again or injures her hand in a mal-related injury so they can match again :(

i have more to say about mal, but i'll save it for the grisha theory/amplifier section

the darkling

overall, darkling portrayal was very spot on, but i didn't really like how he just. gave alina his name so early on. in the books im quite certain he doesn't give alina his first name until the third book? regardless, he doesn't give it to her until they've fought and been enemies for a while. theoretically, kirigan giving his real name to alina so early could be a manipulation tactic (like his moments of 'vulnerability' and 'weakness' with alina in the book), especially because we lose that 'heart to heart' by the campfire after the darkling rescues alina from the fjerdans where alina first starts to see the darkling as human.

i also thought it was interesting that alina kisses kirigan first - in the books they're actually having a serious discussion (i can't remember what about, but when she realizes the darkling is Not Good, she remembers the first time they kissed as a thing he possibly did to distract her from thinking her own thoughts), and the darkling interrupts her with a kiss sexy enough for her to forget what's going on. the show however chooses to do a girlboss she-can-move-on-if-she-wants-to moment which is pretty cool and let's be honest, if you like men and ben barnes is right in front of you giving you Sexy Eyes a whole lot, you are going to want to kiss him. that scene where they get interrupted during a steamy kiss, and they laugh and kirigan leaves the frame just to rush back for one last kiss? that nearly fucking converted me. that was really sweet actually. the show does a fantastic job of showing how captivating kirigan's interest can be.

last note about the kirigan for this section - isn't kirigan the name of the guy who owns the guilded bog for nikolai in kos/row? i can't be sure because i don't have my book with me and i refuse to look up information when i have gone this entire post without looking anything up, but if his name isn't kirigan it's pretty fucking close. i don't know what that means, but i don't think bardugo is the type to name characters similar names for no reason. we'll know for sure if/when the guilded bog is introduced.

zoya

most of zoya's portrayal is really in line with her character and her development throughout the shadow and bone trilogy as well as king of scars and rule of wolves. i think the show did a great job of showing how zoya was in the darkling/kirigan's favor for a while before alina arrived and how she resents alina at first for causing her to not be the darkling's favorite anymore. in addition to that, knowing we find out she is part suli in row makes her casting so much better, and i like that we get to see a little more of her personality in the show than we do in the book shadow and bone. of course we see more of her in siege and storm/ruin and rising, but it's nice to have her become a sympathetic character through the knowledge that she has family in novokribirsk and that she purposefully mans skiffs to see them before she fully sides with alina.

the one thing that made me. just confused was zoya calling alina a "half-breed" at the little palace?? it was so out of place (that particular part of the insult; im pretty sure the other thing she said was very much exactly what she said in the book. some insult about orphans i think), especially knowing that zoya herself is a "half-breed," so that didn't make sense to me.

however, i was glad to see alina immediately embrace zoya as an ally - because she knows from the start of zoya's alliance that she had family that kirigan killed. in the books, alina's parentage is not at all important, and their deaths are never specified to matter, but the show points out from the very beginning that alina's parents were swallowed by the fold. i think this makes alina's immediate compassion and forgiveness of zoya make sense, and it was also very sweet and a little funny to see alina pull zoya into a hug that she so obviously does not expect or want to express as something she wants. it was perfect.

east vs west ravka civil war

i don't have much to say about this except it makes kirigan's actions at the fold seem a little better. not great, not by any means, but knowing that the leader of a growing coup was right on the other side really cements in the idea that kirigan is doing this for what he thinks is the greater good of ravka. im pretty sure in the original trilogy, there was also some tension between east and west ravka, but none of it comes to a head until the events of kos/row. great set up for future ravkan tensions in future seasons.

david and genya & fedyor and ivan

before we get into the last meat and potatoes of this post, i want to talk about love because it's a little bit of a break. take this time to stop reading, stretch, relax your jaw, straighten your back, drink water, etc. you've been here a while. you deserve it

okay so first fedyor and ivan. in the books, fedyor and ivan are just bros (i don't even remember them ever really interacting?) but in the show it is heavily implied they are dating. this is so funny to me, and i love it so much. especially because ivan was in a het relationship with marie in the books (but because the show kills marie off before she dies in the books, obviously that is not happening), so they really just decided that ivan and fedyor were gay for seemingly no reason. except i think ivan died on the skiff during the final battle in the show which is kind of a bummer because he lives through to ruin and rising and has an... interesting arc. fedyor, i think, dies in the battle of the little palace in siege and storm, but i wonder what they'll do with this relationship in next seasons. maybe fedyor will take ivan's place as grieving boyfriend with ptsd, but im not sure. i honestly don't even know for certain if ivan dies in the show, so we'll see.

as for genya and david, i would just like to point out the little hints of mutual affection. in the books, it's kind of implied that genya had feelings for david first and he didn't realize his own feelings until after she's scarred by the darkling, but in the show we see david actually looking at genya during the winter fete! like looking, appreciating the view! i loved the show choosing to include that small amount of mutuality, and after finishing rule of wolves it definitely made me feel some type of way. david and genya. i love them, they're perfect.

grisha theory/amplifiers

we're nearing the final stretch in this post, however, i have a lot to say about grisha theory and amplifiers, and i also have a lot to say for the battle of the fold so this "final stretch" will probably be. a very long stretch.

so obviously because of the nature of books and narrative writing, there was a lot of space within the shadow and bone book to go over the grisha theory alina was learning at her time in the little palace in great detail, however in the show we hardly even get any grisha theory at all. the little we get is actually from the apparat. im not sure if we get anything from bhagra. i don't even think we get the phrase "like calls to like" which is the most basic piece of grisha theory throughout the entire grishaverse.

i am definitely. bitter about this. i obviously didn't want huge long meditations on grisha theory in the show, but pretty much the whole time alina was at the little palace, i felt like she had so much time free time to wander around the palace, hang out with nadia and marie, daydream about mal and kirigan. don't get me wrong - those are all valuable activities - but i feel like it missed the point of alina's time at the little palace. she felt isolated there; yes, she had nadia and marie, but she couldn't share with them everything she was going through because she didn't want anyone to truly know how difficult mastering her abilities were. and because she was so isolated, she throws herself into grisha theory, especially during the times in which she can't summon her abilities by herself. this is when she learns about why she's been so sickly her whole life (because she has not used her abilities, and grisha derive some form of life force and energy from using their abilities), all about amplifies, and other really cool world-building for grisha abilities and culture. instead, it was difficult to tell (at least for me) in the show if the palace and the little palace were even different places while in the books the little palace was such a whimsical, ancient, and magical place for alina compared to the gaudiness of the main palace.

the collar

anyway, complaints about architecture and alina's subpar theory education aside, the little bit of grisha theory we get is from the apparat when he talks about ilya morozova and the three amplifiers he was attempting to make during his lifetime. when the apparat is describing amplifiers, it almost seems like amplifers - not just morozova's inventions - are super rare in the world of the show. amplifiers are relatively rare in the books, obtained by only some of the most powerful grisha (zoya, ivan, alina), but they still exist. from what we've seen of zoya and ivan, they didn't seem to have amplifiers on their person, so it looks like alina is unique not only in getting an amplifier from one of morozova's beasts, but also in just getting an amplifier in general, which is a little weird.

EDIT: thanks to @laelipoo for pointing out that zoya is actually shown to have what looks like a tiger’s tooth embedded in the skin of her wrist in the first episode! so okay this shows that powerful grisha still have amplifiers in the world of the show, but this probably suggests that instead of being pieces of jewelry like in the books, they act more as body modifications, which is really interesting. if im not mistaken, ivan’s amplifier is a necklace in the book, so maybe his show-amplifier would’ve been embedded in the skin of his chest. regardless, i’d still like to see more discussion on how amplifiers in the show work - which, now that we know zoya most probably has an amplifier, we might get to see with her becoming more prevalent of a character in the projected arcs of the show (both shadow and bone trilogy as well as kos/row)

i can't remember if morozova was ever referred to as "the bonesmith" (i feel like he has been, but not in the way the apparat refers to him in the show), but i feel as though that was a kind of. foreshadowing for how we would see the stag amplifier work later in the show. in the book, the stag's antlers are a literal collar around alina's neck that remains there until she loses her abilities, so the metaphor of being "owned" by the darkling is definitely there. it never stops being there until she loses the ability that makes her his mirror and his tool. however, in the show we definitely. do not get that.

so i've seen some people say that they hate the design of the stag collar, and i cannot say i was a huge fan of looking at it myself. but that just really cemented in the fact that kirigan forcing the collar on her is a complete violation of her body and her agency. the fact that the bones erupt from her skin and that her skin looks irritated where the bones puncture through her skin just reinforces the idea that this fusion is not natural and is not supposed to be pretty because kirigan taking control of her in this way is really really terrible actually. in addition to the collar, the show also gives kirigan a circle of bone embedded in his hand - which, hand versus collar, who has the most agency in this situation, his hand is quite literally around her neck, etc - but i feel like they made this change so that non-readers could see and understand the mutuality of the amplifier in a physical manifestation because the show doesn't expand on that theory at all.

i really liked that the show kept the reason for alina gaining control of the amplifier being her connection with the stag before kirigan killed it because that at least is consistent with the theory in the books, especially with the expansion of that same theory in kos/row with zoya's connection with juris and how true use of an amplifier requires mutual connection, understanding, and suffering between the grisha and the animal.

i also thought that the way the show portrayed alina taking back control of her power with the stag's horns absorbing into her own bones was a really effective way to show that the power is hers now, and that it is a part of her. however, i wish the show had kept some evidence of the collar because of how it quickly became a piece of her iconography in the books as well as a symbol of her power. seeing as how alina stabbed the circle of bone out of kirigan's hand (very sexy girlboss moment), i wonder if kirigan will still be able to control her abilities. if he can, i hope that any time he uses her abilities, the horns emerge from her skin again as a visual signifier that alina is being violated and that her own power is being used against her. OR even at the times in which alina uses kirigan's power against him (like if the show depicts the conclusion to the battle of the little palace where alina uses the darkling's merzost) to have the horns come out of her skin to show that she is reinforcing her bond with him. both would be really cool.

alina and mal

okay so in ruin and rising we learn that not only are alina and mal bffs and in love whatever, but also that they've been drawn to each other because mal is actually the host to the last of morozova's amplifiers. and then alina looks back at the times in which she's felt the most powerful or when they encountered morozova's beasts, and she realizes that all of those times coincide with when she had important moments with mal. this reveal is huge in the series, and without the build up, i fear it might seem like it would've come out of nowhere if the show chooses to go in the same direction.

for example, alina and mal in the book only find the stag after they kiss for the first time. however, in the show they don't kiss. they don't even move mal's "i see you now" speech to right before they find the stag. it's simply a jump cut to alina and mal in the forest looking at the stag. they might be talking, but i don't think it was an 'important' moment for them.

however, they've been setting mal up as a better-than-average tracker since the very beginning with ana kuya asking him specifically to hunt for dinner. mal also admits that when he saw alina's power come from the tent when kirigan is testing her power that he heard a 'high-pitched tone' and somehow intuitively knew that it was her or something like that. he also tells alina that he'll always be able to find his way to her, no matter what, which is really romantic of course, but it is also part of their connection as one of morozova's three amplifiers and the girl who will possess at one point in time two of the three amplifiers.

i also think that the scene in ruin and rising when alina kills mal for his power is supposed to directly mirror the scene in the shadow and bone book where alina tells mal before they find the stag that she wants him to kill her before she can be caught by the darkling; part of the reason she feels strongly enough to ask this is because she understands grisha theory enough to know what the darkling's plans for the stag and her are. when she's protecting mal and the stag from the darkling, she begs mal to kill her. but he doesn't. and in ruin and rising, when they're out of options during the final battle, mal tells alina to kill him. and she does.

but without alina asking to be killed paired alongside the lack of intimate mal and alina moment before they find the stag, i wonder if the show will be heading in the same direction as the books in terms of mal's status as the last of morozova's creations, or if they'll decide to do something different.

battle of the fold

i think the most obvious difference in the battle of the fold is that kaz, inej, and jesper are like. just chillin on the skiff. additionally, zoya is on the skiff (her presence there was discussed in the zoya section), and mal is not a prisoner in the skiff like he was in the book - he snuck on. for the six's presence on the skiff, i don't mind it and i actually like how they participate in the battle (inej throwing a knife into kirigan's chest and nearly ending his shit right then and there was something we always wanted but did not know we wanted. same with zoya and inej bonding during a fight), but the change in mal's freedom status on the ship is a little more complicated.

in the books, the darkling lets alina and mal spend one last night together (with bars between them) before whatever happens on the fold. i can't remember if he tells alina that he plans to execute mal in the fold, but regardless it becomes apparent that is his plan when he throws mal overboard, on the edges of alina's sunlight, and begins reigning in the sunlight so that mal will be consumed by the fold. it's the fact that mal is in danger that alina manages to gain control of her power once more, and she saves mal. the group of dignitaries from the various nations are still on the ship when she makes her escape, and she uses the Cut - a form of summoner ability that she has never used before and has only ever been used by the darkling. she makes the terrible and difficult decision to let the dignitaries die in the fold alongside the darkling, because she believes it's a worthy sacrifice to make, and she and mal escape together.

i think this sequence of events would've tracked really well in the show with how alina had previously been depicted as mal's protector, but the show chooses not to have alina save mal and kill the dignitaries. instead, the show has kirigan kill the dignitaries and also has mal have a homoerotic fist fight with kirigan which is. not exactly not in line with themes the show has put on, especially with how mal and kirigan have interacted before in the show.

in the books, we don't see mal and the darkling interact without alina as a buffer, and so a fistfight between them in the battle of the fold in shadow and bone wouldn't have made narrative sense and would've just ended up feeling cheap. however we do see mal and kirigan interact without alina in the show - when mal is showing kirigan where the stag is and kirigan learns alina's favorite flower through mal, and when kirigan gives mal that petty little speech about how he'll get alina eventually while mal grows old and dies.

there's an interesting phenomenon in certain kinds of love triangles; most of the time you see love triangles in the classic sense of Person B and Person C both being in love with Person A, who has to make the choice between B and C. however, that's not a true love triangle - there also needs to be a connecting factor between B and C. and, in most cases, that connecting factor is the ritual of masculine homosocial rivalry. so when applying this kind of love triangle to alina, mal, and kirigan, we see that both mal and kirigan have feelings for alina, but they also have a connection to each other through their rivalry, which is as much about rituals of masculine conquering (whether the person they are wanting to conquer is alina or the other man is a very interesting question to which the answer is yes) as it is about being the person alina loves.

do i personally like the kirigan/mal fight in the fold? no, i would've much preferred to see alina rescue and protect mal. however, i do recognize that the fight makes narrative sense within the show, and it was really funny to see kirigan get his shit rocked by mal's bare fists a couple of times. i would say i hope he's been humbled by the experience but we all know that's not true.

also remember when i mentioned that kirigan is the one who kills the dignitaries here instead of alina leaving them to die? and remember, way back in the beginning when i said that alina inadvertently getting her cartography unit killed in the show may have been a swap for some deaths in the battle of the fold? alina being excused from the deaths of the dignitaries in the show but responsible for the deaths of her cartography friends at the beginning is what i was talking about. like i said way back (or maybe i didn't say it but im saying it now), it makes narrative sense. i get it.

however, i think the choice not to have alina perform the Cut on the skiff when she regains control of her power is an interesting one. because, in the book, that was an ultimate show-off of power (even if it was a terrible moment for alina). no one else but the darkling can perform a Cut, and as soon as alina forcibly takes control of her power from the darkling she uses his own signature move to leave him for death? that's a power move. that's irony. that's a physical manifestation of alina being able to adopt and take advantage of some of the darkling's power and use it against him, which is definitely a main theme in the book as it happens every single time alina gets close to defeating him and also when she actually defeats him.

so the Cut is really important, and i want to see in what other situation the show might have alina perform a Cut of her own against kirigan, or if they'll even include that aspect of reclaiming of power. i really want them to.

conclusion

so what have we learned? i think, first and foremost, we have learned that i have so many opinions and should learn how to be sweet and concise with my words. we have also learned there were a lot of changes between the grishaverse books and the series, and these were only the changes that i remembered off the top of my head having watched the series almost a week ago and having reread the books over the past few months.

in addition to those things, we have learned that, in my academic opinion, many of the changes made to fit the story into the screen were positive changes or, at the very least, changes i am interested in seeing develop. in the end, i am just a fan, and regardless of what season 2 may throw at us, i trust bardugo's decisions because she has never let me down narratively before, so i'll probably end up loving things the show ends up doing because i am, at my core, a simple sort of person.

i had a lot of fun writing this all up, and i hope this super long post was informative or entertaining in some way. thank you so much for reading<3<3<3<3

[alxarasm]

Can we talk about the number of parallels between Alina and Zoya’s stories and character arcs. They are literally two sides of the same coin.

THERE WILL BE RULE OF WOLVES SPOILERS

-First we have Alina, the sun summoner, who was once nothing then became one of the most powerful Grisha to the point where most people saw her as a saint.

- Her childhood was quite happy despite not having parents because she always had Mal. So, despite the Darkling’s manipulation and whatever she may or may not have felt for him, she always had Mal to go to.

-Her desire for power mostly stemmed from the desire to defeat Darkles even if a tint part of her wanted that power. But she never truly feared it, she was only slightly wary of it.

-She faced a whole identity crisis involving the whole ‘what am I? Am I a soldier, summoner, or a saint?’ and she eventually came to terms with what she really wanted which was definitely not the life of a saint.

-Her power was something so sudden and so powerful that she was overwhelmed at the power she was expected to use all of a sudden.

-The toll being the sun summoner took on her was unmistakable and she was always a pawn in someone’s game whether it was Darkles’ or Nikolai’s.

-Not to mention that being a living saint meant that many people, including the Apparat, wanted her dead or controlled, and without a position of considerable power, she was never going to survive being a saint.

-So she did what any girl would do and faked her death, got married at 18 and went to live in an orphanage with two dozen kids to take care of.

-Her outlook on love was that it was what made her feel safe and at home, she never shut it out but always accepted it easily, sometimes to the point of naivety.

-I just want to add that even if Alina was going to be queen, that was going to happen by marrying Nikolai despite not loving.

Now onto Zoya...Again, this will have major spoilers for Rule of Wolves.

-Zoya was always seen as quite powerful at the little palace, even for a squaller, and she quickly rose up in the ranks from being a soldier, to the commander of the second army and Nikolai’s general as well as a member of his Grisha Triumvirate (my Zoyalai heart). I’ll talk about the events of RoW in a bit.

-Her childhood was...not so great, despite having both of her parents alive. Her father didn’t care for her, her mother resented her and tried to marry her off at the age of nine to a sixty year old for some money.

-For a while, she had her Aunt after she saved her from the wedding, but that all ended when Darkles destroyed Novokirbirsk, killing her aunt in the process. So, she literally had no one considering that the only other person she felt admiration for was the guy who killed Lillyana.

-She always desired power. It was the main reason she felt drawn to the Darkling anyway; because power was protection for her. In fact, she was drawn to power to the point where she was scared of becoming like the Darkling.

-Her arc consisted of two major points: coming to terms with her suli heritage and being biracial as well as feeling accepted by the suli. And opening herself up to love and allowing herself to be loved by those closest to her (Nikolai, Genya, and Nina).

-She was never overwhelmed with power, and she always knew she was suited for power. This doesn’t mean she wasn’t afraid of greed though. The power was never too much, it’s the fear that it won’t be enough.

- Although Darkles used her when she was younger, she never let that happen to her again and she always had a sense of agency and self worth.

-Meaning, she never let herself be controlled and becoming a Queen (without marrying Nikolai even if she loves him) and the most powerful Grisha to the point of being seen as a saint (we love our Dragon Queen) meant that the Apparat could not control her.

-So, she literally ended up a Queen with her Demon fool as a consort.

-She was so scared to love because she didn’t want to grieve the people she’ll eventually lose but by the end, she opens up to love and lets herself be with Nikolai knowing she’ll eventually lose him.

[starry-sky-stuff]

Rule of Wolves and Choice

The way that Rule of Wolves and, indeed, the Nikolai Duology as a whole, dealt with choice and agency has an excess of questionable implications.

I drew from a post chain here between me and @jeaniefranklins in writing this post.

Zoya’s a character who has never really gotten the chance to dictate the direction of her life. As a child, her mother tried to marry her off to a wealthy man, then she gets conscripted into the army, turned into a child soldier, and indoctrinated. Becoming Queen was not wholly Zoya’s decision. Nikolai decides to nominate her as his successor without consulting her or any real indication that she would be okay with his. Not only is this out of character, in my opinion, but inherently disrespectful to her agency. Imagine if your partner nominated you to become the boss without asking if you’re okay with the duties and responsibilities that come with that role. You probably wouldn’t be too happy about that. I understand that Leigh Bardugo wanted to keep this from the audience for the dramatic reveal, but she could have had Zoya know about it. She managed to pull off a narrator keeping things from the audience multiple times in the Six of Crows Duology.

Furthermore, as part of this wider theme there was room for an actual deconstruction of child soldiers, indoctrination, and agency but this is never fully explored. I understand that it's YA so it's predicated on a certain amount of suspension of disbelief but that doesn't mean the ethics of child soldiers couldn't be examined.

Being a soldier is all Zoya, and the other Grisha, have ever known. They’ve never been taught to be anything else much less given the opportunity to explore other pathways. Serving the Darkling, the Second Army, and Ravka, is the only life they’ve ever had. Zoya could still have chosen to serve Ravka, but it would have been her choice and not just because, as a Grisha, she’s never had the opportunity of choosing a different life.

This is part of a wider problem of Bardugo failing to critically analyse or deal with her own worldbuilding. She sets up a lot of themes that fall to the wayside because she’s not willing to carry through with the implications. The Grisha draft is an objectively awful thing that involved taking children away from their parents against their will, and the payments certainly implies to me that the poor and orphans are specifically targeted. Parents of the Grisha students, and indeed families in general, are almost never mentioned. Zoya visited her aunt and wrote to her, so it clearly wasn’t forbidden, but neither do I think continued close familial ties were encouraged. It doesn’t fit into the Darkling’s policy of indoctrinating the students. They arrive at the palace and are told, here’s your new family, here’s your new father, be loyal to them. They’re indoctrinated into the belief of Grisha supremacy, isolated from the real world and closed up in the Little Palace. And if they don’t want to serve in the army, then they have to go on the run or move to another country.

It’s not as if these issues are completely ignored, either. Tolya and Tamar both express disdain for the system of the Second Army, and even Genya points out how terrible it was to take children away from their families. For Zoya, it wasn’t terrible though and it saved her from a bad situation. So, the narration brushes over it completely. This could have been a moment of reflection for Zoya, where she could realise that her experience isn’t universal and for other people the Darkling’s actions denied them a safe life (or at least safer, this is Ravka after all). But we get no reflection, because that would involve confronting the fact the system hasn’t inherently changed. Yes, the draft has ended, but the militarisation of Grisha society remains.

There’s no evidence that the Little Palace has changed from a military school to just a school. Literally, all it would’ve taken is one line to mention that the Grisha can now choose whether they want to join the Second Army even if they were taught at the Little Palace. There could’ve been an effort to reconnect the Grisha with their family, or retraining Grisha so they can take up other jobs (Frabrikators could easily become inventors of things other than weapons, Squallers could work on ships, Healers can work in hospitals, etc). But there’s none of this. We’re never given a close enough look to see how the new Second Army is substantially different from that under the Darkling.

Ultimately, the poor treatment of Zoya and the other Grisha's agency is merely a symptom of the problems with the worldbuilding. To acknowledge that they were and are denied agency would open a can of worms Bardugo simply wasn’t prepared to address.

(*on an extra note, the plotpoint of Zoya killing Juris and taking him as an amplifier has some very gross implications. If I’m wrong, feel free to correct me, but at no point did Juris ever explain to Zoya the effects of killing him. Did she understand the effects of essentially taking on him and the dragon like a person hosting a demonic possession? And she certainly wasn’t coping well with it in the beginning of Rule of Wolves. In a different story, a mentor figure using you to basically continuing living in your head would be a horror story)

[mtayl0rr]

I present to you, my preferred epilogue to “Ruin and Rising”

There stood the remains of an orphanage. Not many dared to venture over to the grounds, especially after hearing the tales of what happened there, and why the building was as dilapidated as it was. All but one young girl, who’s hair faded from red to bright white. She received strange looks, either from the deep bags forming under the eyes, or her fragile state. Maybe even the fact that she was strikingly familiar to some of the residents who heard the tales of Sankta Alina. Yet, nobody questioned when she took the land in as her own and began to rebuild it from the ground up, with the help of friends in high places.

She never spoke to many people, keeping to herself and her work, finally allowing her hair to return to it’s natural white as time passed. Whispers of a dead lover circulated around the quaint town, as rumors flowed as easy as the river in the mouths of the townspeople. But, nobody would ever know the true horrors that kept the girl locked up in the crumbled ruins of the old orphanage.

Time heals everything, but healing Alina Starkov would take more than that.

Each night as the girl closed her eyes, she felt the emptiness of the bed beside her, and the sharp intake of breath that her lover drew as her dagger pierced his skin, claiming his life for the sake of Ravka.

I am become a blade.

Every time her eyelids closed, she was met with the vision of haunting blue eyes, staring up at her without any spark. The girl could feel the blood dripping down her skin from the dagger, warm and bright red. Her throat still felt horace from crying out to him, even as the last strings of life dripped from his body, taking him from her.

But it was not only the tracker that she felt the absence of those lonely nights. The girl found herself aimlessly attempting to tug on the once present tether that connected dark and light. The string that connected her to true balance. Her mind went to pull onto something that wasn’t there. Something that she also killed.

The girl was forever haunted by the look in his quartz eyes- not of a monster, but a beautiful boy, trapped in an eternity that was close to an end. The feeling of sticky tears trailing down her face as the man she once swore to kill laid dying in her arms, asking of her to remember him as Aleksander. A boy with a name, and not a title. The boy who listened too closely and lost everything he had held dear. A boy whose grave would be spat on, if one ever existed. The boy who’s heart now held the blade of her dagger, still stained with the crimson blood of her lover. The man he wanted to be.

Don’t let me be alone.

The dying words of the man who hurt so many, all stemmed from his fear of being alone. Yet now that he was gone, she was truly one half of a whole, for sunlight is worthless without darkness to shine in. Although, there was no light left to prevail.

The darkness never frightened the girl again, even though she had nothing to fight it with.

There were still wars, and from those wars came orphans. The girl turned the ruins of the old Duke’s house, once full of things to be seen and not touched into a place for children to call a home when violence tore through what they once knew. War was inevitable, and the girl knew that all too well.

An oil lantern was always lit to fend off the darkness from those who were still afraid, and the grand piano in the music room was left uncovered, allowing the once hollow halls to be filled with great music. Children sang and laughed, playing around in a manner so unlike the way the girl was raised, along with the boy she once loved. Yet, she knew that she was doing good, and that his death was not forgotten.

Children with no parents to call their own learned the stories of the brave, handsome young boy who sacrificed his life for the good of Ravka. No matter how much it pained the girl to tell, she illustrated the boy’s life nevertheless. She spoke of him as an old friend, whose life was torn away too soon, but for all the right reasons.

The staff and children noticed how in all the tales of the boy she once knew, there were never mentions of the masters of the small science who were ever prevalent. No man who controlled the darkness, or Sankta of the sun. It was an unspoken rule that one was to never ask about the sun summoner, and they all abided by it.

Wealthy and mad, were words spoken about the white haired girl who ran the orphanage. The staff never approved of her. She allowed the students to be too loud, too much money was spent on sugar for tea, coal for winter, and books filled with stories of magic. Why would one go to such lengths to make orphan children happy?

She mostly kept to herself, when not reading to the young students, or discussing matters with the well paid staff. Some say that at nights, they can hear the haunting cries of someone who lost so much, and gained too little. Some well eyes children noticed the small grisha-made dagger that was always tightly nestled in her belt. When a young girl, no older than five, asked about it, the woman simply replied, “It belonged to someone I once knew.”

She never said who, for it pained her to mention the white haired Sankta who died alongside the tracker and Aleksander that night on the fold. The girl who would never come back.

The students learned math and geography, science and art. Tradesmen were brought in from local towns and villages to offer apprenticeships. The new King hoped to abolish the draft in a few years time, and if he succeeded, every Ravkan would need some kind of trade. When the children were tested for Grisha powers, they were allowed to choose whether or not to go to the Little Palace, and they were always welcome back at Keramzin. At night, they were told to keep the young King in their prayers— Korol Rezni, who would keep Ravka strong.

Although the girl was certainly far from nobility, she had friends in higher places. Constantly, gifts marked with the royal seal would arrive, filled to the brim with goods like blankets for warmth, or books to stock the library. The staff noticed the girl smile at the small parchments left alongside the lavish gift, even sometimes allowing a laugh to escape her lips. They never saw her laugh before.

Once a man arrived with a fleet of toy boats that the children launched on the creek in a miniature regatta. The teachers noted that the stranger was young and handsome, with golden hair and hazel eyes, but most definitely odd. He stayed late to dinner and never once removed his gloves. Every winter, during the feast of Sankt Nikolai, a troika would make its way up the snowy road and three Grisha would emerge dressed in furs and thick wool kefta

—red, purple, and blue—their sledge weighed down with presents: figs and apricots soaked in honey, piles of walnut candies, mink-lined gloves, and boots of butter-soft leather. They stayed up late, long after the children had gone to bed,talking and laughing, telling stories, eating pickled plums and roasting lamb sausages over the fire.That first winter, when it was time for her friends to leave, the girl ventured out into the snow to say goodbye, and the stunning raven-haired Squaller handed her another gift. “A blue kefta,” said the math teacher, shaking her head. “What would she do with that?”

“Maybe she knew a Grisha who died,” replied the cook, taking note of the tears that filled the girl's eyes. They did not see the note that read,

You will always be one of us

The girl knew grief, as she spent her days clutching the dagger in her hands, or trying to pull on a tether that had been gone for years now. They couldn’t see the small eclipse necklace that she kept over her heart, under her shirts and away from the world. She never wanted him to be alone.

One day, on the rare occasion that the girl stayed outside of her room for more than what was needed of her, the golden eyed man walked by the small window seat to find her playing with the rays of sun that speckled into the glass, a sympathetic frown forming on his face. At the feeling of his uncovered hand, the girl allowed herself to cry into his arms. She cried over all those she had lost, over the boy whose name was replaced by a title, or her tracker who’s life she took. The tracker that she had wished foolishly would be there beside her.

Time. something that for a small period seemed irrelevant to the girl, eventually healed her. Yet, the scar over her heart never faded.

[suki-schiffer]

Thoughts on Rule of Wolves

A compilation of my raw initial thoughts and feelings after reading Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo, sequel to King of Scars, seventh book in the Grishaverse. I just finished reading Rule of Wolves (RoW) yesterday and wanted to get some of my unaltered thoughts and feelings on paper before they become influenced by rereads and by being exposed to others’ opinions. There’s little rhyme or reason to this, it jumps all over the place, I’m not taking the time to check spellings etc. also, spoilers.

I am probably evaluating all the Grishaverse (GV) books a little too harshly because I can’t help but compare them to the Six of Crows (SoC) series which were the first books from the GV that I read. The whole reason I picked up King of Scars (KoS) last year was because I wanted more of that joy I got from SoC, only when I started reading KoS did I realize that the GV books aren’t just set in the same universe but have intertwining plots and characters at which point I realized I’d ruined the Shadow and Bone (S&B) series for myself but I did go back and read that too even though it definitely would not have been something I would have picked up if it had no connection to the other books. The S&B series wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t my cup of tea, as it truly was a YA series with characters that were pretty one dimensional being driven by pure motives down a predictable plot. Many of these characters make a reappearance in KoS and RoW and while they have a bit more dimension to them now they are still too pure, too perfect, and my feelings about them from previous series still stuck.

I don’t like Zoya. I didn’t like her when I first read about her is SoC and I really hated her after reading S&B. Those feelings were hard to cast off when she becomes a slightly better person in KoS/RoW but the entire time I couldn’t help but think she was undeserving not just of being a main character but of being a member of the Grisha Triumvirate, of being Nikolai’s love interest, of that ridiculous amount of power, and of becoming Ravka’s queen. I felt like her “backstory” was rather forced to try to make us like her more. Like oh, how sweet, she has a secret garden with a plant for everyone she’s lost. She still came off as a bitch. I honestly still don’t know what drives her. In S&B first it’s her desire for power and beauty and the Darkling’s attentions then when her aunt is killed she joins Alina maybe for revenge? But other than Alina asking for her to be part of the Triumvirate I didn’t really know why she was in that role don’t know how or why she agreed to become Nikolai’s general, because she loved him? Or perhaps it’s because she’s still just power hungry wanting to lead the Grisha, wanting to lead the army, wanting to lead the nation?

Disregarding my feelings for Zoya, her power increase in KoS and RoW is ridiculous. How is it that she is the only Grisha (save perhaps the now dead saints) who can break down matter small enough to draw power from every order? You’re telling me that this girl manages to do this after a few weeks with Juris but people like Baghra or the Darkling who are hundreds of years old and significantly stronger and were actively trying to strengthen themselves couldn’t do this? Ilya Morozova, the Darkling’s grandfather, did all kinds of experiments, dabbling in merzost, how is it the Darkling, in all the years he spent waiting for a sun summoner, not at least dabble in the other orders in attempt to summon sun himself? If you were to rank characters by power on a scale of one to ten I would have said the Darkling was a ten but Zoya blows that scale out of the water when she becomes the dragon, a character this powerful just feels wrong. Not to mention she didn’t even really work for this power, she trains with Juris for a bit in the Fold and then makes his scales into fetters, there was no years of study and practice or meditation, no struggle, just bam! Power.

So yes, still don’t like Zoya and I think her character arc, if you will, decreased the quality of the book.

Again, I’m comparing things to SoC but in comparison RoW was rather predictable. There were definitely a few twists I didn’t see coming and a few questions that were left unanswered but with SoC I was constantly guessing at what would go wrong, what the new plan was, I was constantly on my toes. That constant guessing kept me interested, by comparison I was at times bored with this book, if I put a book down (mid-chapter even!) to scroll through Tumblr or watch Youtube videos or do something else for the sake of enjoyment before finishing that book that’s a sign it isn’t all that interesting, and that’s what I was doing with RoW.

It was just too predictable. Like oh no, the Darkling tricked you into meeting Alina and Mal, got his power back, and fled, who’d’ave guessed it? What’s this? Hanne ended up getting too much attention and might be forced to marry the prince, Rasmus, of Fjerda because of it? Ehri’s guards make another attempt on her life? Nikolai weasels his way out of marrying Ehri because his true love is Zoya, no way! Joran, this young Druskelle who is for some reason being punished by having to be Rasmus’ guard is the one who killed Matthias? Oh and why is guarding Rasmus a punishment when he could be the hope of getting Fjerda to end the war? Because he’s an abusive shit who hates feeling weak so he tries to make others feel weaker, didn’t see that one coming, nope, definitely not.

Now for a few of the things that surprised or confused me that I’m still sort of confused about. Let’s start near the beginning with the Fold suddenly, not so much as expanding as just, appearing in different places all over the world with seemingly no rhyme or reason. I didn’t really get how a pocket dimension existed within the Fold in the first place or how the saints got trapped in it but apparently breaking out of it allowed the Fold to take on a will of its own whereas it had previously been stable for hundreds of years. Also the Darkling not having any powers after leaving the Fold was confusing, I shouldn’t necessarily say “any” because he seemed to have been able to make subtle changes to Yuri’s body to make it look more like his own but I didn’t understand how his power could seemingly enter his body granting him control and consciousness but then he not have any power until he gets Mal and Alina’s blood (also wasn’t clear what he did with the blood, did he just have to touch it, did he stab all three of their hands so the blood mingled?). This just sort of felt unnecessary and that it was just a means to pull Alina et al back into the story.

In KoS it was implied that the use and existence of Jurda Parem was the reason Nikolai’s monster came back and the saints now had enough power to create miracles to entice them to the Fold and draw them into the pocket world, this theory is never mentioned again. Can you tell I’m just really confused about everything related to that pocket world?

Speaking of that interaction with Alina and co I was honestly hoping Yuri might have a bit more of a role in the story. Yuri had seemed sort of willing to let the Darkling use him as a vessel and Nikolai discovering he was still in there with the “there’s something in your beard” line didn’t clue me into the fact that there could be more to this because I assumed he was still on the Darkling’s side. But then he tries to warn Alina of what he’s about to do and I thought, oh, maybe he has second thoughts, maybe there’s going to be a fight now for control of the body and Yuri might be able to stop the Darkling from doing something sinister by fighting back at the right moment. Alas, he goes back to singing the Darkling praises. I get that Yuri is a bad guy but I still kind of felt bad for him, not enough to care about his wellbeing, at least not until the very end because as far as I’m aware Yuri was still in his body with the Darkling when the Darkling decided to have a bit of a redemption arc by condemning himself to an eternity of pain to close the Fold and keep it closed. As far as I’m concerned the Darkling deserves that fate, Yuri doesn’t.

Speaking of the Darkling taking control of another’s body another thing I was left wondering about happened in one of Nina’s earlier chapters when the new Wellmother from the convent Nina and Hanne had been at arrives at the Ice Court to accuse Hanne of worshipping the Saints instead of Djel. At the end of this chapter the Wellmother’s eyes are described as slate grey, I’ve only ever heard the Darkling’s eyes be described that way. I really thought that the Darkling was just pretending to be powerless and had actually developed a new power of taking over other’s bodies and he was just biding time by gathering intel and causing chaos this way, I thought this might have also been how he was creating the mini-Folds all over the world (look I know they had a Ravkan name that roughly translated to vampire but I’m not going back into the book to find the spelling and calling them vampires just... no). I was so concerned for Nina, here this woman is claiming to actually be part of the Ravkan spy network and that Nikolai needs her to get close to Demidov Lantsov. This order made no sense because Nikolai knew he wasn’t a Lantsov and the existence of another Lantsov doesn’t mean much, as long as the people think Nikolai is the legitimate son of the former king and queen then he outranks every other individual with Lantsov blood in terms of succession. Also if this were a legitimate request it seems like there would have been much easier and safer ways to communicate this than have someone come from across the country making false claims against Hanne that could put her under suspicion thus limiting Nina’s ability to move. I thought this was therefore some sort of trap to expose Nina, and potentially Hanne, and the fact that nothing came of it left me confused. We never see this Wellmother character again, Nina does not get exposed, when we get the Darkling’s POV in the second part of the book he mentions nothing of this encounter nor is it suggested that he actually has such a power.

I then thought perhaps if the Darkling survived and was now in Yuri’s body perhaps this was his mother, Baghra, come back to life as well. Then we get thrown a random line during one of the Darkling’s chapters where he mentions the existence of a half-sister that was also declared a saint that I don’t recall hearing about before this instance, in fact I’m pretty sure Baghra said something in the Spinning Wheel about only having one child because she didn’t want a repeat of what happened to her and her sister and that she didn’t even remember who Aleksander’s father was so if the Darkling knows of this half-sister we would assume it’s Baghra’s child. Apparently though this sister was referenced in the only GV book I haven’t read being Language of Thorns (just a side note RoW is said to be the seventh book in GV but if you include The Lives of Saints and The Language of Thorns it is actually the ninth). I could be wrong, maybe Baghra never said anything about her son being her only child, or maybe this is another case of Bardugo altering things between series. She did this with Nina’s backstory because in SoC when Matthias talks about courting her properly and having dinner with her family she said that she hadn’t seen them in years since she went to the Little Palace but in KoS and RoW she’s an orphan who grew up in an orphanage and doesn’t remember her parents. Point being, after that line I thought the Wellmother might have been the Darkling’s half-sister since she had claimed to have been a spy in Fjerda for thirteen years which would mean she’d been there since before the events of S&B, if that is true then it likely couldn’t be Baghra. I’m still hung up on this character though, for all the reasons outlined, yet the KoS series is over and she only made one appearance so maybe she just was a spy with slate grey eyes.

As mentioned previously I knew Nikolai wasn’t going to marry Ehri but I didn’t realize Genya and David were going to be the ones getting married, or maybe “renewal of vows” would be a better term. I’m perfectly content to have this come out of the blue, predictable can be boring, but then it started getting weird. I had just assumed previously that Genya and David had been married sometime between the end of the S&B series and the start of KoS as that’s when they start being referred to husband and wife (same with Nadia and Tamar) and I had no reason to believe it wasn’t the wedding they wanted. Then there’s mentions of them having a hasty wedding in Ketterdam and this just felt like yet another attempt to placate and garner hope in readers by referencing SoC. As far as I know David wasn’t in Ketterdam during the SoC series, he was the only one who stayed in Ravka, even if he was there and just wasn’t “on screen” I don’t understand why they would choose to get married then and there. And if not during the events of SoC then when? What reason did they have to both be in Ketterdam outside of the events of SoC and decide they couldn’t wait to have a proper wedding in Ravka? I was angry at this point because a similar thing was done in KoS where lines about SoC kept getting dropped and getting my hopes up that the other crows would make an appearance and they didn’t.

But back to the wedding, running off to his workshop because he had an idea during his own wedding is totally in character for David. Him dying was just evil. Didn't even cross my mind that this was a possibility, one minute we go from Genya digging through the rubble in her wedding dress saying she can’t find him then we are at his funeral. I thought he might have been gravely injured, unconscious for a long period of time, and that he’d had an idea for an invention that would help them win the war and he’d save the day by waking up in time or something. But no. My favourite character from S&B was killed off, just like that. And it was impactful, it made me cry, the fact they had found him pen in hand, fingers stained with ink, in his wedding clothes, the fact that in his notebook he has notes about how to woo Genya and she wants him to have it in death. Beautifully written, definitely salty about it. At this point in time I don’t really see how his death furthered the plot but death in real life is like that to, it’s unexpected, without reason, sudden. And perhaps, like Matthias’ death in SoC, it will be used to later start a new plot for a new story.

Now two paragraphs ago I was lamenting the fact that the mention of Ketterdam felt forced and had the intent of fooling the readers into having hopes the other SoC cast would return but then they keep hinting at it, they talk about contacting Kaz, about travelling to Ketterdam and I’m sitting there thinking please, please, please actually have Kaz meet them, don’t just be letters or some other minor Dregs sent in his place. (!!!! <- there are no words for my excitement!)

I made an audible screech when Nikolai gave money to the beggar because I knew that was Kaz in disguise. I was so pleased to hear that it sounds like Pekka did not return to the Barrel and that Kaz bought the Emerald Palace and expanded the Crow Club. I was slightly disappointed that Inej wasn’t trailing Nikolai and Zoya too or that she wasn’t meeting with them in the Crow Club probably mainly because I just wanted to see her again but there was also a sadness that it sounds like she did decide to walk a different path than Kaz. The fact that Nina had, earlier in RoW, talked about how she hoped for Inej’s sake Kaz had fixed his hair cut by now, contributed to this because obviously she thinks they stayed together. Maybe they are together in a way but long distance relationships without any suggestion of communication technology must be hard, especially when Kaz could be taken out by another Barrel boss or Inej’s ship blown up by pirates (or the Kerch as was implied by Nikolai) and the other might not ever know of their fate and certainly wouldn’t be there to save them, so I feel that due to this they wouldn’t actively be in a relationship. However, I am proud that Inej put her dreams before Kaz’s she could have given up those dreams to stay at his side and continue to be his spider, after all, that’s what he had asked her to do he wanted her and he wanted her to stay, in the Dregs, with him. Wasn’t too thrilled that she’s used as a sort of damsel in distress. Help us Mister Brekker and in exchange I’ll give you a device that acts as an early warning system against the submarines I gave the Kerch (yes they have a different name that starts with an i and there’s a z and y and m in there somewhere but instead of me trying to spell it lets call them what they are, subs) because the Wraith will be blown up otherwise as she won’t be able to get away in time.

I don’t know if it was because this part of the story was written better or if it was just because I like these characters so much more (my darling baby boys!) but I felt like the story finally developed momentum here that it was lacking previously. I love that Wylan and Jesper are living together with Wylan’s mother and acting like an old married couple. I also like that Wylan is trying to keep Jesper away from illegal activities but is also clearly continuing to work on chemistry projects and likely explosives and that Jesper’s love of Barrel flash hasn’t been quashed, Zoya actually even compliments it in her head. I also love how, as soon as Wylan hears this illegal act can help Inej, all restraint is thrown out the window. Kaz was able to pull off so many tricks in such a short time too, I love it. First dressing as a beggar, then pretending the operation will be more difficult than it is in order to drive the price up, then pretending that due to changes in how the goods are being stored at the military base they couldn’t carry out the operation with such a small crew, meanwhile he knew the Suli were there and would connect with Zoya and show them the “backdoor” to the base. Now I completely understand how Ketterdam was built on slavery or, as they like to call it, indentures, so I can see how Suli would have built the place, I imagine some of the Suli are still in Ketterdam, why they returned to the military base that night I don’t know. Also the fact they were all wearing jackal masks, something Inej said is reserved only for holy men, Suli seers, and wearing one was akin to sacrilege if you were not a seer, implies that all these people were the rare seers which seemed a bit unlikely. The fact that Zoya has this encounter and an earlier one made me think that maybe the Suli would play a larger role in RoW than what they end up doing (because this is the last we see of them, they don’t come to fight the battles, they don’t impart secret knowledge to help Ravka win the war, Zoya doesn’t find her father or her uncles or decide to learn more about her Suli heritage).

I was very disappointed with how quickly we leave Ketterdam, Kaz, Wylan, and Jesper. I suppose we do the same thing with Alina and co at the sanatorium where there is no proper goodbye. In one chapter we finish the job/plot point and in the next the main characters have left. At the end of the day I suppose I was just glad we actually had a few scenes with the crows and not just hints, was definitely the most surprising part of the book.

The crows were a positive surprise Nina and Hanne getting together was more of a negative one for me. It was hinted at in KoS but Nina has also been said to have made eyes at a pair of shoes so I had hoped the relationship wouldn’t grow beyond flirting, I feel it just diminishes what Nina and Matthias had. She also doesn’t seem to feel any remorse for moving on so quickly and even though she’s still thinking about him, about her promise to save some mercy for his people and country, and trying to fulfill her promises, she’s also forsaking him by getting together with Hanne.

That being said I, like Nina, really did believe Rasmus had killed Hanne near the end of RoW and while I hadn’t wanted them to be together the damage to the relationship Nina and Matthias had was done and I was thinking “really, you’re going to do this to my girl Nina twice, take away the person she loves, twice, for no good reason?” So that was a surprise and I was glad that Hanne did survive but I really don’t see how she could live as Rasmus and even if she could pull it off I don’t see the Fjerdan people, military, or royalty permitting a prince to marry Mila, a widowed fishwife. Nina was saying something about using her power to get the answers from the dead which I thought was a very weird development for her powers in the first place. In KoS when Nina said that she was hearing the voices of the dead I thought it was more about she was sensing a mass grave and could tell that the bodies were women and the death unnatural. Near the end of KoS I thought perhaps there were some memories left in the brains that she could access, names and how they died. But in RoW Nina is able to reach out to the dead, identify the queen’s best friend and lady-in-waiting and ask her questions and get answers and implies she can do this with Rasmus as well. There are a lot of logistic fallacies with this. One, it implies that people don’t go to the Saints or to Djel or to any kind of afterlife when they die but that they stick around their corpses. It also implies that Nina can probably override their free will, the women and girls at the factory had “called” to her, I doubt Rasmus and the lady-in-waiting would want to share everything so freely. Finally, if Nina can communicate with the dead then how come Matthias’ voice that she heard in the beginning of KoS was just her imagination and not really him? This could also make Nina incredibly powerful, no need to torture or bribe secrets out of someone or try to steal top secret documents, just kill them with a bone dart and demand answers of their ghost.

In regards to Nina’s power I am disappointed with how little she used it in RoW. With the exception of speaking to the dead I believe she briefly controlled two of the newly dead Priest Guard to restrain the Apparat for all of maybe thirty seconds and that was it for the entire book. While Nina has always done undercover work or subterfuge, pretending to be native to find Grisha in hiding, sneaking into the Ice Court pretending to be part of the Menagerie, pretending to be Mila the translator for Leoni and Adrik, she has always come off as a warrior to me so to not see her fight at all in RoW seemed a bit out of character. There was opportunity but it wasn't seized and honestly it left me wondering what Nina actually really accomplished during RoW, she didn't free Nikolai's true father, she didn't free any Grisha or destroy Fjerda's parem or find labs and holding facilities, she didn't help win any battles, didn't actually manage to dissuade Rasmus from war. Zoya took her from the Leviathan, flew her all the way to the frontlines of the north where there was death aplenty, and then flew her all the way back without her ever doing more than cling to Zoya’s back. Surely she could have raised some of the dead just to drive the point home, no?

The one thing I did like about the final battle was that we finally got to see the Darkling be less than perfect, a theme that sort of carried through the book. He started off with no power, mind you his scheme to get it back went off without a hitch, but then he was pretty much on the run having to trade manual labour for food. Yet he had this plan and I had no reason to believe it wouldn’t work out for him, that he’d go to the frontlines, preform a miracle saving Nikolai and Ravka, and manage to get himself declared a saint for his troubles. Instead we see him just as affected by the disk bells as everyone else, we see him try to summon shadow, try to summon nichyvoya (I acknowledge that’s spelled incorrectly, I can’t be bothered to find the correct spelling) and he can’t. I thought it was glorious.

While the Darkling did end up doing some good in RoW, helping Nikolai’s monster stay alive long enough to destroy the disk bells, shutting up the Apparat (why isn’t he dead, his character is a harbinger of bad things to come and he’s a creep, how did Zoya not kill him?) in order to give Zoya a better chance of getting the throne, and finally sacrificing himself to the Thornwood to undo the damage he let loose on the world with the creation of the Fold, I didn’t feel as though he had redeemed himself and for this I was glad. There are all kinds of evil characters in GV and the Darkling likes to pretend that his reasons are pure, that he’s protecting and strengthening the Grisha, but he is a mass murderer seemingly without empathy, he happily manipulates people to get his way, puts Genya, who at the time could be considered a child, into the king’s path, then later mutilates her as punishment for letting Alina get away, all for the sake of his own cause. In the GV I hated Van Eck and Brum and Heleen much more than the Darkling, but I do think he’s the most evil of them all, in part because his unnaturally long life has meant he’s been committing evils for centuries. I’m glad that it sounds like this is the end for his character and that while in the next series Zoya wants to free him from his eternity of agony that freedom will come in the form of death.

Speaking of the potential plot of the next series, I can’t believe that without even doing any research they are able to come to the conclusion that a “heart strong enough” is the heart of Saint Feliks and they intend to send Kaz after this, what if they’re wrong? Also, they finally bring Inej into the story for Zoya’s coronation, don't know what reason she had for being there. But then we’re done dirty because Inej doesn’t get to meet Alina although she catches sight of her, and they are ready to send Inej back to Kaz with a message about finding this saint’s heart but she’s already left so they’re just going to use a plain old flyer instead! You could have at least sent our darling Inej, treasure of our hearts, back to do Kaz the honour of acquiring him a new heart. But no, brief meaningless appearance and she’s gone.

Unfortunately, it seems there was a lot of things I was displeased with in RoW. I think overall the main problem the RoW (and KoS) is that it just became too big, the characters became indistinct because they grew out of character, there were too many references to past stories and characters in attempt to please readers rather than for the sake of the story, there were too many characters and plots to keep track of in general, and due to all this I couldn’t remain suspended in disbelief. I approach this as someone who entered the GV through SoC, I picked up SoC because the story was interesting, I picked up KoS and S&B because they were set in the same universe as SoC not because I particularly wanted to read those series. I had thought I could be interested in KoS on its own because it is more complicated than a typical YA novel and Nina is one of the main characters but now having finished RoW I have to say that if the GV really was just a collection of stories set in the same universe but with no intersecting of series I would have never have read this one. Will I go back and read KoS and RoW again? Yes, of course. Will I sometimes pretend that it never existed when I reread SoC? Yes, of course. But I do think the wait and the hype was worth it even if just for the few chapters with the Dregs again, because let’s face it, that’s what I personally was waiting for.

So I wrote this as a Word document over the span of three days and it’s now over 5000 words long, completely unedited, no order, probably reads like chaos. I want to see if and how my opinion changes over time but I’ve decided to post this because I like reading and watching others react to things I like so maybe someone else out there is like me and will find this and get some enjoyment from this.

[hopeymchope]

hey, sorry to barge into your inbox despite being a total stranger (and feel free to respond to this privately if you want) but i came across some of your s/n/k critical posts and i just wanted to say i agree SO much. and i wanted to thank you for vocalizing this opinion because i know both i and some others agree with you. i've personally felt that everything after chapter 80 was a mistake (because i thought the whole serum fight over erwin vs armin was pretty fuckin stupid too) and it's kinda funny (i guess) to see the ending 100% validate my opinion completely. i can't believe every character was done this dirty for the sake of a very poorly constructed "both sides are bad" scenario that was also in VERY poor taste considering the explicit allegories to n*zi germany and a literal race war. like what's up with the jews - sorry, the "eldians" - once ruling the entire world via a bloodthirsty empire and also being inhuman creatures? gee, that sure doesn't sound like every antisemitic conspiracy theory i've ever heard. and way to rationalize oppression, too. the entire point of an oppression narrative is supposed to be "hey, the oppressor's prejudices have no rational basis and are literally mistreating this oppressed group due to their own selfishness and cruelty," not "oh btw marley's fear/hatred of eldians kinda makes sense considering eldians once enslaved the entire planet and can turn into giant man-eating monsters." is*yama SERIOUSLY should've just stuck to writing glorified vore lmao.

and while all the characters were either killed, turned into plot devices, or both, it hurts that EMA and the main protag himself suffered this treatment as well. i still think pre-timeskip eren is utterly irreconciliable with post-timeskip eren and the fact that both fans and the author himself try to make it seem like "hey he was ALWAYS a batshit crazy psychopath from the start!" is sort of pathetic to watch. like yeah, lemme just ignore the first 80 chapters of character development for this guy. or lemme pretend that the author didn't spend the significant majority of the decade making eren the most empathetic character in the entire series. or let me also pretend that eren killing those human traffickers to save a 9 year old girl from being a child sex slave is somehow evidence/foreshadowing/etc of him eventually growing up to destroy 80% of the planet. like, what? not to mention he even rebuked himself for recklessly killing those two men like that in chapter 17...so am i supposed to ignore that too?? and don't even get me started on the "eren went insane and accidentally caused his mom's death." bro. BRO. i've watched the entirety of game of thrones yet i STILL have never seen this level of "edgy plot twist for shock value with no benefit or relevance to the story whatsoever" in any media to exist.

well anyway...sorry for ranting in your inbox like this LMAO i really just wanted to tell you that i agree with your opinions about both the series ending and the series as a whole. i doubt i'll ever engage with this cursed manga ever again but at least pre-chapter 80 s/n/k will always be a thing and i can pretend they all got reincarnated into a modern AU where eren and mikasa are happily married and living with their bff armin in a nice condo or something. they alternate between visiting carla and grisha or mikasa's family on weekends. yeah that sounds pretty good. if you made it this far then kudos to you and thank you for reading lol

Thanks a ton for the kind words of commiseration. It feels like there’s a plurality of people who are unhappy, sure... but it comes off as still being a minority, and even among that minority, it seems like most people are still fine with most of the timeskip so long as they stuck the landing. But I think they were much too far off-course pretty fast after the Timeskip started to really correct it very well. It was possible, but the writing was on the wall. The intentions were already clear pretty early on after the skip. 

That said, I try to keep this Tumblr mostly positive and DR-focused, yet I still absolutely had to rant about SNK 139. The more I thought about it, the more I disliked it... and this comes from someone who was already unhappy for a while, obviously, so. Yeah. Of course I was gonna dislike it on some level, but I thought it’d at least provide closure to the Timeskip arc, even if I do think the Timeskip arc feels at odds with everything else the series was for 3/4 of its run.

And HOLY SHIT I literally forgot about the Eldians’ history of apparently being horrible, vicious rulers of a sinister empire. You know why? Because I NEVER BELIEVED IT. I was so 100% certain that it was going to be outed as bullshit propaganda from Marley that I never once thought it was plausible, so I just... pushed it out of my mind as soon as I read it. After all, all that kind of talk about the arch-conspiracy of Jews has always been total bullshit from anti-semetic monsters, so why would I put any stock in this kind of talk being applied to the Jewish race of Attack on Titan? 

But now, at the end of the story... yup, I guess he never DID go back on that! So it was fucking true?! The Jewish people in this WWII analogy were apparently an evil master race at one point?! Oh. OHHHHH. Go fuck yourself with a shovel for that one, Isayama. 

And yeah, Eren... god, what a sad story. He becomes unrecognizable as the same character thanks to the Timeskip, the new characterization is never explained or justified retroactively - it’s just opposite day now, forever - and he dies accomplishing nothing. I don’t know what to say, except I do know how much I loved that character and this series before things went south. I didn’t even mind the backstory for the Titans and the horrible story of Eldians in Marley... because it seemed so obvious that it was setting up a battle against a hateful, technologically advanced foe that was beyond the darkness of anything they’d fought before, y’know? Marley, as it was set up in the flashbacks before the Timeskip, is Nazi Germany if the Nazis had tech and scientific horrors and numbers far beyond what the Allies had. And nobody EVER feels bad for killing Nazis, so this was obviously going to be a final battle to destroy the Marleyan military, with Zeke likely to serve as a Final Boss who has totally 100% bought the propaganda and who hated everything Eren stood for. It was all RIGHT THERE. Maybe it was just too easy to tell that story, because instead, Zeke is suddenly supposed to be a gray character (very hard to accept given his backstory), and we end with the “uwu both sides were bad bc war is hell” message that is really pretty fucked up, as you already correctly pointed out.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Wilk and Grisha Yeager from Attack on Titan had the same goal: to liberate their races from oppressive regimes. But their parenting styles were radically different. Zeke resented Grisha because Grisha raised him not as a child but as the prince and future savior of Eldia since his birth. Asirpa, on the other hand, remembers Wilk fondly and shows no signs of being raised as a tool and weapon. Why did Noda portray Wilk differently from Grisha as a father and a freedom fighter?

Well...

I’m not really a fan of “Attack on Titan”. I recently tried watching the first series and I loved the animation (I so wish GK could benefit of such an amazing animation!) but, for some reasons, it still didn’t really intrigue me that much even if I could see it was a well constructed story with lot of interesting characters so I ended up stopping there.

Maybe I should give it a second chance when work isn’t draining me.

Anyway, back to your question I can’t really compare Wilk’s raising methods to Grisha‘s because I didn’t manage to see Grisha’s methods yet... but still the answer to your question is pretty simple.

They do things differently because they’re different people/characters written by different authors for different purposes.

Not all the fathers and not all the freedom fighters are the same so it’s not like Noda and Isayama HAD to forcefully represent them as the same. Sure, sometimes in stories authors chose to go for the same tropes, so you meet father figures who act the same but this is not a given. You can also have authors who chose to defy those tropes in favour of different portraials.

Even if we consider GK, who has two fathers who’re also 2 freedom fighters we see how Kiro and Wilk raise their children differently.

Wilk views Asirpa as a future leader of the Ainu and seems to count on her to reach his goal where Kiro wants to be the one who’ll reach his goal for his children.

Wilk started to train Asirpa when she was really young... while Kiro left his children safely at home and didn’t involve them in the gold hunt.

Even in the way in which Kiro and Wilk handle Asirpa they’re different.

Neither of them taught her to kill or encouraged her to do so but Wilk, in chap 137, entrusted her with the task of murdering a bear when she was really small (even though, truth to be told, he was there to cover her back)...

...while Kiro, when they were facing a bear in chap 68, told her to stand back.

Kiro wanted Asirpa to be educated on the minorities outside Japan and to learn about the risks all the minorities were facing as well, where Wilk preferred her to learn about Ainu culture and go to a Japanese school.

This reflects the fact they’ve different views on how to raise children and on how to introduce them to their cause.

They’re not the only ones who, despite being fathers in similar situations, act differently.

Thinks to Ueji’s father and Koito’s father.

Both had a right to be disappointed in their children as they were performing poorly at school but Ueji’s father insisted he was disappointed with him and, officially, gave his dog away so as to force him to focus on his studies where Koito senior instead first let Koito be (probably also due to him suffering depression due to his son’s death) continuing to spoil him without scolding him and then acted supportive when Koito decided to switch from the navy to the army (even though navy and army had poor relations ans this could be a problem for him).

And then we’ve Hanazawa who pressured his son into becoming an idol for the army.

Fathers, and even more characters, come in any flavours in Golden Kamuy. They don’t have to be all the same or follow the same rules because their goals are similar.

So, back to Wilk, I think he loved Asirpa and put value in showing his daughter that love. Maybe he was a loved child, so he learnt to pour love to children from his parents, maybe it was Riratte who influenced him by giving him love.

It’s also clear Wilk wanted Asirpa to be involved in his cause... but I think he also wanted it to be her own choice, not something he forced upon her because there’s nothing that makes you more devoted to a cause that the fact YOU decided for yourself that’s what you want to pursue.

So he gave her an aducation of which she would benefit once she were to decide to become a partisan... but didn’t introduce her to partisans, didn’t pressure her to hate Japanese or educate her to murder people.

Ultimately what Asirpa will do with her knowledge is Asirpa’s choice.

Truth to be told though, Wilk seemed so enamoured with his ideals it could be he believed Asirpa’s choice would come naturally and she wouldn’t need to be forced into it.

It’s hard to say.

It’s also worth to mention that, in truth, we only have small fragments of what Asirpa’s life with Wilk was. As she loved her father and lost it when she was a little above 6 it’s entirely possible that, if she had some unpleasant memories of him, she subconsciously removed them and kept only the good ones.

Long story short it’s really hard to judge how Wilk was as a father because there’s little material and all of it is seen through Asirpa’s eyes.

He clearly came out as an odd father in Ainu’s eyes as the education of Ainu children at the time was very gendered, with the boys going with the fathers and learing how to hunt and the girls remaining with their mothers and learning female works so Wilk, teaching Asirpa how to hunt, surely came out as odd... and he would have looked even odder if it turned out he wanted Asirpa to lead the Ainu... so his actions aren’t just moved by his love for her.

He clearly has a goal for her.

But back to your question what’s interesting though is that his goal for her is not to be a tool or a weapon in his hands, is to be a leader. Somehow Wilk didn’t want Asirpa to be an instrument but the master of her own destiny. If anything he hoped she would surpass him as a partisan warrior and become what he couldn’t be.

The one who would lead Ainu... gaining what he couldn’t get, freedom for the Ainu.

Fathers who view their children as weapons or tools often instead want to be the one who’ll become something or who’ll gain something, with the kids being merely pawns in their games, not masters of their own destiny.

In a way it’s a matter of trust and ambition.

Wilk didn’t aim to lead the Ainu for himself and trusted Asirpa to be able to do a better job than he would, other fathers just want to reach something for themselves and don’t trust their children to be able to reach goal without them ‘leading/directing/using’ them.

We see it in the Hanazawa/Yuusaku relation, where Yuusaku is a pawn, meant to inspire Hanazawa’s troops and not make his father look bad.

And it’s interesting because Ogata too expected Asirpa to be a pawn in Wilk’s game and didn’t quite understand why he hadn’t taught her to kill... whcih Wilk should have done if Asirpa were meant to be just an instrument in his hands.

Wilk instead wanted for her something more than just that.

Said all this, I don’t mean Wilk was an awesome father.

In his love for his own cause he still influenced and directed Asirpa’s growth toward the destination he wanted. It was much lighter manipulation than the one children were normally subjected back then (back then fathers were to chose a child’s future job and, possibly, also who they would marry) but it’s still manipulation.

He might have been blind to it, thinking he was doing it for Asirpa’s well being... but he still forced her in a situation that was pretty dangerous and manipulative.

Long story short I think Wilk wanted to be a good father... but that ultimately he still prioritized his goal over what Asirpa might want in the warped idea Asirpa would surely want the same as him.

But well, that’s just me so I might be wrong.

[letusmeetagain]

A place for him in this world

On my question if there is a place for the devil in paradise? Because a devil can’t play with an angel unless a miracle happens.

Narrator: “It seemed wrong for us to continue living. Whether humanity could survive another day was out of human hands. (...) But that day, one boy gripped the dagger in his heart and used it to kill a titan stomping its massive head into the ground. Who did humans that saw that sight feel? Some were filled with pride. Some were filled with hope. Some were filled with rage. But all of them screamed. (...) Can they ever believe again that there is a place for them in this world?“ (ch.73)

I wonder if there is place for rage in a new world. Or will Eren take all the rage inside him down with him?

The dagger...A rage that works as the mean to keep advancing without hesitation. The source of violence in the world, the great power among humanity that also inhabits Eren’s soul, mentioned in Lost Girls. This side of him that no one can pacify nor stop and the one he chose to prevail over his need to save all innocents and use love as a way to connect with others.

That is his kind side which is immensely great and pure. That other side of him that comforted Mikasa after her loss and gave her a new home not being asked for it. The one that made him wonder about Armin’s bravery.

And also the kind side full of compassion that responded to Ymir’s call, stopped her and gave her the impulse to refuse the meaning her environment gave to her existence. That side of him that is capable of great deeds which are always so small yet so powerful. It’s because its modesty that all of this got eclipsed by his other side.

After making the choice to start the rumbling, he became one of the monsters he wanted to vanish from the world. Since childhood, he has always had a clear ethical division between the innocents, his friends, and abusers like him, who is now the one who exceeded any violent act they’ve ever seen. From his perspective, the innocents are the ones that deserve a place on this world. When he discovered he would be able to take such a decision, he immediately lost his own right to have a place and sided with the undesirable to his own eyes. But self-harm is okay under the light of his mission and he also deserves it following his own rules. He would have wanted to live as an innocent yet his own nature is something he can’t deny, ignore nor control.

That side of him described as a reckless child that spouts out his feelings without being aware of the consequences for himself nor for his environment is something he isn’t able to drown. He can’t. He brought things to the point of challenging his environment to stop him like a child who needs that his surroundings show him where the limit is. Stop being a lonely hunter lost in the forest, being truly connected to others means for us to learn to control ourselves and give up on violence. As I said in another post, Grisha hadn’t enough time to show him the truth. Nobody could.

Yet this scene was very clever. Right after showing this panel, Ramzy appeared to point out not only the fact that both drives are part of his nature but the fact that his drive of helping others is as strong and unstoppable as his violent side. It isn’t possible to take them away from him but through his own choice to let one of them have control over the other. His kind side even turned into a justification for his choice.

It’s not the future he can’t control but his drives, he has always been the person who would make those decisions since the very beginning.

In contrast to his determination to continue the rumbling, the true nature of his feelings about his fate seems to be different. As well as Ymir was waiting for someone to come and save her, that also applies to Eren. Maybe he isn’t deliberately willing to be saved but that’s what he needs as any human cornered like him to throw everything he loves. A salvation he is fated to reach since the moment he formed bonds to his friends and loved them (Yes, that meant Krüger). After Ymir died, she kept carrying the mission of maintaining the Eldian empire… obeying for the eternity the statement of King Fritz “You were born to be a slave“  as if it were her truth.

But how is it for Eren? What’s the meaning of his life? Is it just his mission? For what goal does he want to attain freedom? Is it for him? Of course not. I think his existence was always reduced to his mission and urge of freedom what he believes is his own purpose in life. He is the chosen* one who received the power and responsibility to do something fully aware of the future. Both, Ymir and Eren, accepted a meaning given by their nature, their wishes and also forced by their environment too:

Ymir: wanted love, served as a slave thinking that it would be the mean to reach the love and was/is trapped in paths carrying the will of King Fritz.

Eren: wants freedom, let his violent side to be the mean to attain it and is now trapped in paths refusing to stop the rumbling and carrying the mission until the bitter end.

His aim is to carry the burden of 2000 years of collective wrong choices as if he were a fallen hero condemned to carry a sin for the eternity like Atlas.

*by Ymir but also by himself.

For this time, he accepted to throw away everything what’s dear to him, sever ties by planning a systematic attack on two pure bonds based on love in order to set the right conditions to keep up his mission (he and Mikasa, he and Armin and Armin and Annie, ch. 112) and avoiding to make them pay for his own choice. All explains his search for punishment for the child he still is and for being capable of choosing to become a monster.

He also sacrificed the true meaning of having a dream (but not being a slave to it) and being a soldier. All of this sacrifices that corroded his soul. Still this might have been more acceptable/less regrettable than not doing it.

What led him to choose this? There are a lot of circumstances and reasons for it:

His near death to the curse as impulse that prevented him from further dreams of staying with his friends (and also was his responsibility) and go on kamikaze mode.

That childish dream of freedom (as final state) and its delusion as selfish driving force and also coping mechanism helped him to deal with the guilt and keep moving forward. That is also that “something“ he is now drunk on after severing his bonds to his friends and facing this end alone.

And lastly his friends that were the source of strength and determination that justified selflessness of this choice when he had to make a step (ch.108) or when he hesitated to go ahead with the mission (ch.123).

Even if he is testing them and trying to be stopped* and judged by them, there isn’t an underlying feeling of irony here but hope that the choices they’ll make together as a whole will bring a positive change. I had the feeling that he trusts they will follow their own nature to make the right choice.

(*which would be one condition more he set to boycott his own plan as for ex. letting SoY know he would start the rumbling to let them escape)

Although he seems to wait for a clash, there is nothing but hope. The biggest contradiction for his friends would be to have to reach the goal of stopping him exactly through violence. Erasing the cycle of hatred by committing the biggest crime and then searching for a judgment doesn’t seem to bring a true change. In fact, there is hope considering that Ymir was also stopped by the power of empathy and human connection.

Just the modest act of forgetting about grudges and who has the right to hate and live, empathy and recognizing each other as mere humans on the same level, guilty and innocent was enough for Uri and Kenny to stop their fate of being meant to fight each other.

In brief, he was the one choosing this and it was by moving towards the fate he chose that he was being free… he had a performative freedom while renouncing freedom as a final state in the world. The price he has to pay after this is losing the right to live in the world so he won’t enjoy the freedom to stay alive with his friends. He will have//had to give up his dream for himself in order to grant freedom to the people he loves and thanks to this choice, they may be able to make their own choices to solve the conflict and attain common benefit.

At least, his friends, who witnessed his both sides, will know that his truth is to be both: cruel but also beautiful and they will bring him peace by helping him to embrace his duality, that is so human, and release him from this pain and disappointment.

As Karla wanted for him: to be free of having to be special, different from others.

[yor-soverenyi]

Writing sample cuz why not

It wasn’t long after he turned to walk down that hall that he felt her draping herself around him, nearly being dragged along. He didn’t falter in his steps, he didn’t shrug or toss her off, just continued along with a steady gait and a roll of his eyes. So a human was hanging off of him, how foolish she was. Had other Grisha been around to see they would have knocked her off out of disrespect alone, or jealousy. Regardless, it was a harmless gesture and if she wanted to hang off the Darkling then so be it. She was far from home, she didn’t understand a thing about the way things worked over in Ravka and if she kept it up she had a greater chance that she’d be dead by the hands of some other Grisha than by his own. 

His eyes squint at the whispers in his ears. What exactly did others call him around here? Kirigan. Darkling. Never his true name. “When most speak of me I assume they call me the Darkling, when they speak to me however, those who show respect address me as moi Soverenyi.” He drops the hint by putting emphasis on the word respect. Would she address a king that was not her own? He didn’t expect it but she could be full of surprises.

King. She was right about that. He may be King of the Grisha but he wanted to be King of Ravka and he may as well be. He is second in command of Ravka as it is, just below the King himself. The human King that was too lazy to lift a finger to rule, riding off the back of the Darkling just like dear Whilhelmina. Though she was the far lighter weight to bear. When he came to pause by the door he glanced at her wrist. “Going off the fact that most people around here wouldn’t dare to raise a hand against me I would say that it’s an uncommon occurrence.” 

He lingers near the doorway as she takes in her new surroundings, avoiding looking directly at her aside from when she asked what was wrong. That warranted a quick flash of his eyes. What was wrong? That this was just another thing like so many that came before her, someone that wanted something from him and was deciding to be coy about it. It was someone planning to take from him, someone planning to make him look bad, someone trying to kill him. She could be any of those things and it wouldn’t be the first time for any of them. What did all those things have in common at the root? Betrayal. He hated that most of all. 

No one was legitimate anymore, no one was sincere and that above all was very disappointing.  He knew for a fact this Ketterdam girl didn’t travel from Kerch just to write a nice little article about the Darkling. He was betting that she wanted something from him, he just didn’t know what. He hums in response to her question, it was far too much to explain but if he had to narrow it down as to why his mood was worsening by the moment, it was because he could tell she was not being herself. She was not bearing herself to him, and why should she?

Lucky for him she couldn’t keep her mouth shut long enough for him to have to worry about forming a response. That dark gaze lingers upon her as she saunters closer to him, so daringly close. He listens, allowing her to speak all that she wants. An arch of a brow when she thinks he was disgusted by her close, a hint of a smirk when she suggests that he’d want her to run the city naked. It was rather amusing until she got to the point where she compared him to her brother, to not caring about those beneath him. His lip curls just a hint but he keeps his calm for now, allowing her to finish. 

He hoped so badly that she would reveal her true intention for being her yet even if what he heard next was true he knew it was not the all. Still he listened with baited breath, hoping she would reveal that which he would come to learn if she did not. He was not surprised to hear that he made her heart race, to hear how badly she wanted to kiss him. It was the same thing over and over and over again and it was damn disappointing. He couldn’t hide that, the way he sighs into the room as she backs away and wanders back towards the bed. He should have just slipped out then, shut the door and left her to her business...instead he pulls the door shut and moves in closer to her, following her drifting steps across the room. 

“You don’t know the first thing about me.” His tone was close to a snarl, yet not quite. He grabs her arm but this time it’s to turn her to face him and not hard enough to hurt or bruise. “And I’m still convinced that I don’t know the first thing about you. I don’t look down upon all who are beneath me because the truth is ‘everyone’ is beneath me.” He wasn’t being arrogant or vain. The way he said that sounded like he was disappointed by that fact. 

“I may be the most powerful Grisha in this world but it doesn’t mean I look down upon the rest, that I don’t care about them. I do everything in my power to protect them. Everything! - To right the wrongs that they have endured over countless years. How they have suffered at the hands of humans, been killed - “ He shakes his head. “Are ‘being’ killed for being different. Because no one wants to take the time to understand. Being traded as slaves or entertainment because our powers are useful to ‘them’, something to be gawked at. Or worse, being experimented on, torn apart because they want to know exactly..how..we...work.” His tone had dived darker, each word slowly played out on his lips. His eyes fading even darker if that were at all possible. 

“If I look down upon anything it is those humans who support all of the above, who support that we are unnatural and don’t belong. Those that would love to see us gone. Yes, I look down upon ‘them’ because I have to protect those who cannot protect themselves against the madness. And from them I demand respect!” He let’s her go, turning quickly to stand with his back to her. He remembers how he suffered from being different when he was just a boy, how he still suffers because even amongst the Grisha no one is like him. No one knows his power. He is completely alone. 

“There is nothing I value more than honesty, then someone who isn’t afraid to lay it all out there regardless of their intention. Whatever it is you won’t tell me I can promise you I’ve seen it all. Here to murder me?” He laughs. “Get in line with the hundreds of others before you. Here to steal from me? I’m just ‘yawning’ at the thought.” He turns to face her once again. Luckily, he was just throwing out whatever he could think of, no matter how it may have made her heart jump when he first mentioned murder.

“Or are you just here to use me? You need my power for something, you need something done for you. Like the very King uses me, uses me to do all of ‘his’ work in this court. To carry out the plans, to strengthen our armies to hide behind ‘my’ power like all others do.” He narrows his eyes at her. “I admire someone who isn’t afraid to tell me exactly what they want with me, because I’ve not yet come across one who hasn’t played games. I’ve been betrayed countless times, so what is once more? Tell me. Save me the disappointment in even thinking that you could be different than all the others. Because until you can show me you are not like them….” Not it was his turn to lean close, his breath heated against her lips as he hovered his own just out of reach. “Unless you are not like the others, you will never deserve to kiss my lips.” He lingers there a moment then suddenly steps back. “I’m tired of everyone’s games. Hope is something that I crave to no end.” He starts to head for the door. “Write your article, sing my praise...it won’t mask what you want underneath it all.” He drags his fingers across the door as he glides past it.

“I’ll be back with your light soon.” He was already gone, it was his voice that drifted from the shadows in promise of her light that he’d return with in moments of time. 

[aion-rsa]

Shadow and Bone Ending Explained: The Stag, Sun Summoner, and Black Heretic

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This Shadow and Bone article contains MAJOR spoilers for Season 1.

Netflix’s Shadow and Bone is a fantasy epic that has it all: A complex heroine, great supporting characters, and a sweeping plot that is based on a magical system that both empowers and isolates those who wield it. The back half of the season builds to a thrilling climax that’s both intensely satisfying and leaves plenty of room for the story to go in new directions in Season 2. (Which we better be getting, is all I’m saying.)

Let’s break down what happened in the Shadow and Bone finale and what it all might mean for the series going forward.

Alina Fully Claims Her Power

So much of the story of Shadow and Bone is about Alina’s journey to real agency, so it’s especially satisfying that Season 1 reaches its climax as she forcefully reclaims her power—both literally and figuratively speaking—from a manipulative man who only wants to use her for his own ends. Throughout the series’ eight episodes, we’ve seen her repeatedly shirk from a magical ability she never asked for and all the responsibility that comes with it, but here in the face of danger and death, she rejects the Darkling’s claim over her both physically and emotionally, fully accepting not just her own strength, but her right to wield it as she sees fit.

“You may have needed me,” she tells the Darkling, just before she stabs him through the hand and frees herself from his control.  “But I never needed you.” Striking a power pose and glowing with light, she is every inch a hero of legend as she pushes back the monstrous Volcra and saves her friends. It is an utterly triumphant moment, for a lost girl come into her own at last.

Does the Darkling Survive?

Yes, the Darkling lives to smolder another day.

No one is probably surprised that the Darkling survives his violent encounter with a volcra, eventually dragging himself beaten and bedraggled – but still looking very stylish, natch – out of the Shadow Fold. The ragtag band of shadow zombies that slouch after him certainly seems to indicate that Aleksander has successfully leveled up his abilities in some way since he couldn’t use merzost nearly so effectively in the flashback sequence that opened “The Unsea.” 

What this all means about his immediate plans for the future is unclear. It’s obvious that the Darkling is not just furious over Alina’s rejection of him as a partner but by her decision to – as he sees it – betray their Grisha brethren by doing so. (I also suspect he also really dislikes Mal at this point. Sorry not sorry, my man. #Malina for life.) It feels pretty likely that he is or is very soon about to be on the hunt for Alina once more, with a goal of regaining control over her powers and, by extension, the Fold itself.

The Shadow Fold Remains

You didn’t think the dark and ominous evil death cloud full of monsters would get destroyed in the series’ first season, did you?

It’s true, Alina doesn’t manage to bring down the Shadow Fold, but the Darkling doesn’t get to use it as his personal world domination device to subjugate every other kingdom to Ravkan (and by extension Grisha) rule either, so it still pretty much counts as a win in the end. He also exposed himself as a murderous tyrant, leveled the West Ravkan city of Novokribirsk, and animated an army of merzost shadow zombies that are clearly both dangerous and gross. Is he headed back to the Little Palace to take the throne for himself? On the hunt for Alina? Or something else entirely?

By the end of “No Mourners,” most people seem to assume that Alina died in the Fold, so other than small group comprised of Kaz, Inej, Jesper, and Zoya, no one knows that she’s off to find a way to boost her powers enough to face the Darkling again and cleave the darkness in two for good. Will the Darkling somehow realize she’s still alive? Will she be able to sense that he is too? Stay tuned.

What’s Next for Mal and Alina in Season 2?

My new favorite romantic ship heads off on their own new journey to search for a way to bring down the Shadow Fold and, by extension, the Darkling’s dreams of bending the world to his whims.

As Shadow and Bone’s first season comes to a close, Mal and Alina seem very much together in every sense of the word, cuddled up adorably to face a new horizon both literally and figuratively speaking. Now that they’ve both realized not just what they mean to one another, but how much they’re willing to risk – literally anything – in the name of staying together, it feels like there’s nothing they can’t do. (Except kiss, apparently, but I guess the show has to leave me wanting something from next season.)

What is the Sun Summoner Prophecy?

Alina Starkov’s ability to manipulate light means that she is a Sun Summoner, an extremely rare power that doesn’t fit neatly into the existing Grisha hierarchy. (Much like the Darkling, who is technically a Shadow Summoner.)

Since the idea of Sun Summoners was basically the stuff of rumor and legend anyway, many myths grew up around their existence, including a prophecy that basically predicted the Shadow Fold would not fall until a Sun Summoner was born to destroy it. (Shadow and Bone isn’t super clear on this, but the Fold has been around for over 400 years.)  Since Alina appears to be the only Sun Summoner who has ever existed, many Ravkans who follow the old religion consider her a living saint.

Read more

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By Kayti Burt and 1 other

Who is the Black Heretic?

Though General Kirigan initially tells Alina that the Black Heretic – the Grisha considered responsible for the creation of the Shadow Fold and all the subsequent years of destruction it has caused –  is his great-great-great-grandfather, he is, as in so many other facets of his life, blatantly lying. There has not been a series of Darklings with shadow powers who have existed through the centuries, but just the single one. This Darkling, who has gone by many names over the course of his life, is the only Darkling and is at least somewhere around 500 years old. 

Shadow and Bone shows us the creation of the Shadow Fold in a flashback, which attempts to cast the Darkling – then known as Aleksander – in at least a somewhat sympathetic light. After watching his beloved Healer Luda die and fleeing from an army of soldiers with orders to drag him back to the Ravkan king, Aleksander becomes determined to discover how to use the dangerous dark magic known as merzost to protect himself and the other Grisha, including his mother Baghra, in his care. But though he is able to access great power through merzost, Aleksander cannot control it and it pours out of him in an inky torrent, creating the gash in the world that is the Shadow Fold and turning everyone in its path into volcra.

What is the Deal with the Stag?

Though Shadow and Bone mentions Ilya Morozova, it doesn’t do a great job of explaining his importance to Grisha history, at least not beyond his genetic connection to the Darkling. In Bardugo’s books, Morozova was obsessed with the idea of amplifiers, which are specific objects like bones, scales, or animal teeth that boost Grisha power past a single person’s normal abilities. (He is also referred to among religious Ravkans as Sankta Ilya in Chains, because that’s how he was martyred after he performed a resurrection – thrown off a bridge wrapped in irons.)

The magical stag Alina, Mal, and the Darkling spend half the series is hunting has specific connections to Morozova that book fans will remember but TV viewers don’t actually need to care much about right now beyond simply being aware of the fact that the animal is powerful and ancient. Per the Darkling, its bones would make one of the strongest amplifiers ever crafted for a Grisha to wear. And since, technically, it’s the Darkling that kills the animal he can claim the amplifier’s power as his to control, even if someone else is physically wearing it.   

However, before he is able to kill the creature, the stag has a moment of true connection with Alina in which it essentially chooses her to be its avatar and receive its power, rather than allow the Darkling to claim it in her place. Your mileage may vary on whether this as effective as the book twist hinging on Alina’s decision to show the animal mercy instead of killing it outright, but there’s still something compelling in the idea that this semi-magical creature sees Alina’s worth so clearly.

Nina Must Betray Matthias to Save Him

While on what is essentially the cutest breakfast date of all time, Nina and Matthias are discovered by a group of Grisha soldiers ready to do kill him simply for the fact that he is a Fjerdan druskelle. (Translation: Witchhunter). To save his life, Nina claims Matthias is a slave trader who’s trying to traffic her, an accusation meant to take advantage of the Kerch law that promises a bounty for him in Ketterdam.

 Since the sailors only get paid if Matthias makes it to Kerch alive, they’re willing to keep the Heartrenders from killing him outright, and Nina, who must immediately go with them in order to testify, buys some time to save him. Unfortunately, since Matthias was knocked out by Heartrender power prior to all of this going down, he thinks Nina simply double-crossed him and is having him thrown in prison as payback for his original capture of her. 

Though she’s clearly upset about his sudden change of heart, things get worse when Nina learns she can’t just recant her statement in court immediately – Matthias might be forced to stay several years in Hellgate prison (which you know is bad simply from the name) because so many accused slavers are awaiting trial. How she will free him – and whether Matthias will ever forgive her once she does – are questions for next season. But hopefully, they’ll at least get another round of waffles at some point. 

The Kerch Crew Heads Back to Ketterdam – and Maybe the Start of Six of Crows?

With Alina and Mal heading off on a mission to train her powers, the Six of Crows characters must begin their own new journey. Technically, the group is heading back to Ketterdam, where Kaz will ostensibly pay off the rest of Inej’s debt, reclaim the deed to the Crow Club and probably get a little drunk in celebration of the fact that they’re all home and still alive. (Or, at least, Jesper will.) But their convenient run-in with a very calculating-looking Nina on board the ship back to Kerch seems to indicate that a new chapter of their story is about to begin instead.

For those who have read the books, you’ll know that this all feels very much like the start of the story that takes place in Six of Crows. Or, at the very least something very like it. 

As that book begins, Kaz also is once again on the hunt for a Heartrender – enter, Nina – to help with a very complex job. But in order for Nina to pull off that job, the rest of the crew has to help her break Matthias out of Hellgate prison. Since that’s where he’s currently headed and we’ve already seen that Nina is desperate to fix what she’s done to put him there, it feels like a very safe bet that we’re about to see some portion of that story unfold next season.

Given that Six of Crows is chronologically set two years after the events of the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the show will probably have to do some fancy fudging of the timelines to make all this work. But…wouldn’t it be worth it if it means keeping these characters around for a bit longer?

What’s the Deal with Inej and Her Knives?

One of the smallest, most satisfying moments in the Shadow and Bone finale is when Alina gives Inej – who has been sweetly starstruck by meeting a woman her faith already reveres as a living saint – one of her daggers. Basically a literal representation of the heart eyes emoji, Inej declares that she already “knows just what to name it.” But what does that mean, exactly?

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Well, since all of  Inej’s other knives are named after Saints – Sankt Petyr, Sankta Marya, Sankta Anastasia, Sankt Vladimir, and Sankta Lizabeta, to be exact – it’s a safe bet the newest addition will bear Alina’s name. And given how handy Inej is with them, it’s probably the highest compliment she could pay her new friend.

The post Shadow and Bone Ending Explained: The Stag, Sun Summoner, and Black Heretic appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[shinjekinootp]

Why the rumbling is a dumb plan doomed to fail

The rumbling, releasing millions of butts naked giants to flatten the world,. I’ve seen a lot of talks about the um ethic of it and thank god most people were condemning it. However, I have seen no one actually discussing the technicality of such a plan or even if it could work. Maybe it’s because the fandom and characters alike have been mostly focusing on the threat of worldwide genocide, which is fair, but once you start looking into it you realise there’s no reason to freak out because this plan would never work.

In theory it sounds fairly straight forward, release millions of colossal titans to kill and trampled on everyone and everything outside of Paradis Island. But here’s the thing Paradis Island is, well, an island. Those titans are a land force kind of army, and there’s a reason why historically Islands tend to focus on  their naval and aerial force, getting your army from point A to point B when point A is on the other side of the sea is hard- and that applies for titans too.Moving mindless titans to places is a difficult thing, even if you have the ability to control them. The only real way to get mindless titans to a specific spot is to transform humans on the spot where you want them to be, like in chapter 92 where Zeke turned eldians in titans to help them fight a foreign nation while they were being dropped on a city. They used an airplane for that purpose, but while planes could carry eldians they couldn’t transport fully grown titan, thus making it impossible here, those titans are already formed and they’re not going back to a human state any time soon. 

So here’s the question I’m asking, how exactly are those Titans supposed to cross over the sea and reach Marley? (Not to mention other nations that are even farther away in the sea) 

We can safely rule out the possibility of the titans swimming there since we have yet to see them have the kind of structured and deliberate movement required to pull that off, also the image of millions of colossal titans arriving to Marley breaststroke style is just laughable.  So there’s only two possibilities: the tians can either get there by foot or by boat .

So could the titans use boats to make their way over to Marley?

It may sound ridiculous but it is the standards way to get your armies across the sea so I had to consider it. The main issue with that is fairly obvious however, human aren’t taller than boats, but titans certainly are as we could see when Eren Kruger showed off his power to Grisha

Needless to say such boats could not carry titans. A titan simply can not stand on a boat since their weight would be enough to imbalance the whole ship and make it flip over (remember the titan’s body weight only becomes light once their members are cut off, before that they’re as heavy as they look) Since they can’t stand it means they would have to lie down on boats then. The picture seems quite ridiculous but I’ll run with it for arguments’ sake. A quick look on aot wiki will tell you that the walls were 50 meters or 165 ft high. Meaning, we would need ships at least 50 meters long. The longest ship that was ever built was 458 meters or 1, 500 ft long. Assuming the titans were disciplined enough to lie down and that their weight did not cause the boats to outright sink we could fit 9 titans per boat. But we’re talking about million of titans, and that particular ship was one of a kind... Even if they were only a thousand wall titan you’d need a hundred ships like this one, and it’s safe to assume Paradis Island simply does not have  that many ship at their disposal. So for titans to make their way there by boat is not possible, bringing me to the second option, simply walking there.  

Could they walk across the sea and reach Marley?

We’ve seen titan in water before, so surely a body of water is no issue for them? Well here’s the thing we’ve only seen titans in shallow water, like Armin when he transformed in Marely or when Eren carried a Marleyan bot.

But here’s the issue with those two events, they both took place near the coast, where the water was not deep at all. Armin had to first made his way to Marley on a boat and could only transformed once he reached the shore. Similarly, we knew Eren was near the cost as he drags the boat there in the next pannel. We’ve only seen titans moved in shallow water so far but in order to reach Marley they’d have to go far away from the coast into deep deep water.

On average the depth of the sea is 3 800 meters or 12, 500 ft. This just isn’t adding up. Of course this is only an average, the depth of the sea widely differs depending where you’re in the world, so let’s have a look to the depth of the sea around side Paradis Island precisely.

There’s still debate over whether or not SNK takes place in our world, but what is generally agreed on is that geography wise their world is ours, only reverse. As you can see in this the map featured in chapter 93

According to this Marley is the equivalent of the African continent, and although Paradis is much bigger than its real world counterpart the closest real world equivalent is Island of Madagascar.

Madagascar is bordered by the Indian Ocean, which averages at 4, 000 meters or 13,000 ft depth. More precisely in order to reach the mainland from there you’d have to cross the Mozambique Channel whose average depth is 3, 000 meters or 10, 000 ft.

So could the titan simply walk there? Well no, or not without getting under the sea and be entirely submerged. I initially thought this would be enough of a deal breaker, but it might not be. Titans don’t need food and it’s likely they don’t need air either. I mean, if the vampire in twilight were able to cross a body of water by walking at the bottom of it, why couldn’t titans do it too? We can even see in the ending of season 3 titans coming out of the sea to attack people on a land.

While this image is still taking place in shallow water, we can see the titans are emerging from it, thus confirming that they can walk underwater. So is this it ? Have I failed in proving my point? Can the titan simply walk at the bottom of the sea like no biggie? Well, not quite.

In the end it all comes back to depth, while my original idea of the titans being unable to cross the sea because they’d had to go underwater proved to be incorrect depth is still the decisive factor here. There’s only one thing the titan need to function: sunlight. The extent to which they need it differs. Some titan can get by with the reflection of the sun on the moon only. But they do need a source of sunlight no matter what. The wall titans are no exception, as we’ve seen when the walls were breached, if they were to have been exposed to sunlight for an extended period of time they would have awoken.

While water does not block out the sun immediately, it does below a certain level: 1,000 meters or 3, 300 ft.  In the deep sea, little to no light is able to penetrate. In fact below 200 meters or 670 ft, only 1% of the light is able to penetrate the water. For a reminder, the Mozambique Chanel depth is 3, 000 meters or 10, 000 ft. In order to make their way across the titans would have no choice but to go in the deep sea, where they’d be deprived of sunlight and would eventually fall asleep.  And that’s assuming their body could even withstand the pressure present at such a level. In all likelihood their body would get crushed by it. The sperm-whale, the deepest diving mammal can only go up to 2,500 meters or 8, 200 feet deep. Below that level only abyssal creature are able to resist the cold, the pressure and the absence of sunlight.

So there you have it, there’s simply no way the titans could make their way across the sea and reach Marley. How the wall titans were even able to be brought to the island in the first place is a mystery. The most likely option is that they were brought as human and turned into colossal titan on the spot by King Fritz.

Now of course all of those perfectly logic arguments I just made may be discarded by Isayama for plot reason. But if he does, well first of all I’d be disappointed, and second of all that would be one hell of a plothole.

I’m honestly surprise non of the main characters, even the one who are all about science brought that up even just to reassure themselves that Eren is not about to commit a genocide (but maybe I’m biased because it’s the entire reason why I’ve  spent hours researching the science of the sea for that post)

[aspoonofsugar]

I know this might be weird but can you pinpoint what Eren actual plan is actually is? I still don't believe his declaration and i'm sure there is more that meets the eye. Can you give any other probability of what his real plan is judging from his character before his POV was shut off. Can you also include how the role of Kruger memory and advise to Grisha helped shaped the current Eren since I see a lot of similarities between the two in this final arc

The same dude btw. Do you have any theory on why Eren set up PATHS discord to declare his goal. Don't get me wrong but so far Eren intention has been presented as noble even though his method and goal isn't. The intention we have gotten from other character POV btw is to protect his friends and Paradise. What then do Eren benefit from monologuing like a stereotypical villain before unleashing his plan? He isn't the type to instill fear into people before killing them. That's OOC for him            

The wall titans will take days or even weeks before they realistically reach the shores of Marley. Maybe it cause of bias but if I want to commit a genocide with something as slow as the wall titan, I will cut off flow of information so that they will meet their doom by surprise. Also thanks to him announcing his goal, he has helped clear indecisiveness for any Paradisians that's opposed to that outcome. Did he really expect Armin to sit still and allow him after what he pulled in 112?

Lastly, in Eren memory shard. We saw a shard of the fez boy whom he was looking at the last night. The general consensus among the fandom is that Eren decided for the genocide after what transpired in the meeting but if Eren really went out of his way to meet that boy after he ditched the SC, that kind of puts a dent in his genocide plan cause that shard looks to pure with the hand placed on shoulder and the whole body language. Sorry for rambling too much. I know it kind of makes other         

characters development pointless if Eren isn't genuine. But it's just like saying Mikasa character development when Eren died is pointless cause Eren came back alive. I don't know if I make sense

One question, I want to ask about Kruger word on the wall " you have to complete your mission if you want to save Mikasa, Armin and everyone". Are we supposed to ignore that line or is it retconned or what? Many of the analysis I see base off of post timeskip Eren with no POV and ignoring established themes. I just see a lot of theory about big bad Eren and I can't help but wonder considering the scene was emphasized by both Grisha and Kruger. I feel like something is missing            

Hello anons!

These asks can be answered together. I am also sorry for the wait since it has been a while since  I have received them.

I have talked about Eren here and in particular I have said this:

Finally, when it comes to Eren’s future development, I currently see two possibilities.

a)  Either we are given more information through Historia and his POV and this new information can modify the reading of Eren’s actions up until now.

b) He will grow and develop because of the actions of the   other characters exactly like them will grow because of his current   ones.

I think that point a and b which describe two possible ways in which Eren can gain future development lead to two different machro-theories I see going around.

1) Eren plans to turn himself into humaniy’s enemy, so that humanity can join hands, fight him and overcome their struggle in the meantime.

2) Eren’s wish to protect his home and loved ones coupled with his future memories led him to think that destroying the world is the only way he can ensure Paradis safet and so he is doing so even if he knows it is wrong.

I call them “machro-theories” because they can be interpreted in numerous ways and each one has a different nuance and a different spin to it. I am also sure that other explanations could be found, but, as for now, they are the two I find more plausible.

They can both make sense under certain conditions and I think they are the two ones that would have the more foreshadowing if proven true.

Now, let’s address some points you make against theory 2 and in favor of theory 1.

1) The boy with the fez.  I don’t think him appearing in Eren’s memories disproves nor proves anything. Him appearing in Eren’s memories shows how much important was that night for Eren himself. It is the last night he spends with the people he loves before leaving them and starting to act coldly towards them. What is more, the child is a person who reminds Eren of his past self since he is a victim of war and a refugee like he was. Because of this, it makes sense that Eren was such impressed by the child since he represents both his past self and how people outside and inside the walls are the same.

As a matter of fact even if Eren is indeed doing what he seems to be doing it does not mean that he does not realize its gravity (different from the Jeagersists). He clearly does. That is why he cries after seeing the child. It is because he realizes he will die together with other people when he activates the Rumbling. Or at least the hapter implies this.

Alternatively, in case theory 1 is correct, Eren crying might simply be because he is somehow giving up on his past and possibly on his future since he knows he needs to sacrifice himself.

2) Eren’s speech to the world Eldians.

As the first anon said in their asks, it might be a trick Eren is using to stage himself as the only true monster in order to unite the world against him.

Alternatively, someone (whose name I don’t remember, so tell me if yuou know) noticed that the Founding Titan powers seem to work without specific restrictions. So, for example, when Eren ordered that all the hardening had to become undone, not only the walls, but also Reiner and Annie resented of the effect of Eren’s order. So, Eren might have wanted to announce his plan only on the Eldians of Paradis, but ended up bradcasting to all the world Eldians. That said, I don’t find the theory that convincing even if it is interesting simply because Eren’s words seem to be directed to all Eldians.

3) Eren as an antagonist being against the themes.

To this I disagree. As a matter of fact a way to explore a theme is to have the MC have a tragic arc which embodies the opposite of a story themes. Because of this, having Eren who wants freedom ending up representing freedom’s opposite can be an effective way to explore the theme of “freedom”. If anything Eren manipulating everyone, so that things go according to his plan is something which risks not to fit with the idea of freedom. As a matter of fact, having a single character giving “freedom” to others through manipulation seems kind of hypocritical. That said, there could be ways in which theory 1 can be proven true without this happening. So we’ll see.

4) Kruger’s words. I have talked about Kruger’s words here:

He might be doing it because he has seen  Kruger mentioning to Grisha that if he learns to use this power  correctly he can save Mikasa, Armin and everyone else. All in all, just  this hope might be enough for him to push forward in a confused hell despite the fact he has only partial information and that he might very well mess up in the process.

In short, the panel of Kruger mentioning Armin and Mikasa is clearly important and I think that that panel together with the one of Mikasa in chapter one have still to be explained and will be in the future. What is more, I think they are connected to the Attack Titan piower somehow.

When it comes to Kruger’s words it is possible that, as I say above, Eren is also animated by them in doing what he is doing. As a matter of fact being told by my future self that doing something will save the lives of people I love might be a reason good enough to do whatever I am told. I also think we might see Eren sending himself this message in future chapters.

In conclusion, both theories 1 and 2 are still possible. They have both positive and negative aspects to them.

For example, having theory 1 be true would make difficult to understand why Eren could not simply tell the others about it. Why did he have to risk the destruction of the world hoping that a bunch of people who could have died countless times would join together and stop him against all odds? This is something which seriously needs to be addressed not to make the whole situation ridiculous and it can be addressed either by adding plot-points which make Eren’s choices understandable or by clearly showing that Eren was wrong not to tell others.

At the same time, for theory 2 to be true there is the need to find a convincing reason why both Historia and Eren’s POV have been hidden from us up until now. If Eren wants to destroy the world and that is, why have we not been shown his pov and why is there still mystery about a meeting between him and Historia? Similarly, there is the fact that it makes no sense for Eren to have told Floche his plan and not people he truly cared about. As a matter of fact even if he wants to destroy the world, why should he want a group like the Jeagersists rule over Paradis considering they are a threath to people like Hange and Levi he cares about?

All in all, why is he pushing Armin and Mikasa and the others away? No matter what theory is true, it must address this point.

These are my two cents as per now.

Have a great day!

[thesffcorner]

Wicked Saints

Wicked Saints is the first book in a YA fantasy trilogy, written by Emily A Duncan. It follows 2 characters; Nadezhda Lapteva, the only remaining cleric in the kingdom of Kayazin, who can communicate with all of the Gods; and Serefin Melenov the High Prince of Tranavia, who is sworn to bring Kalyazin to its knees, and kill Nadya. However, things are not what they seem, and both characters might have to work together if they want either of their lands to survive.

This book is a whole ass mess. At points it was entertaining, even approaching good, but for the vast majority it was jumbled, rushed, and wildly inconsistent. It’s not the worst book I’ve read but it’s not good either, and I have a lot to say. So strap in: it’s going to be a long one.

Writing:

This book is a debut, and much like another debut I read earlier this summer, it shows. It’s not that the writing is necessarily bad; I daresay that Duncan has a good grasp on style and especially dialogue. A lot of the banter between the characters was entertaining, and for the most part I got a good sense of who these characters are, and what their motivations were…. Some of the time. The book has a good atmosphere, I liked the descriptions of the monastery and the different cities the gang visits, and I’ll even go as far as to say that the scenes between Nadya and Malachiaz were good in isolation. The devil’s in the details. 

First off, this book is the definition of telling instead of showing. So many things in this book are explained to us rather than Duncan showing them, from character motivations and relationships to entire scenes that we never get to see. The biggest example of this was the fight at the end. It’s so confusingly written, we jump between character PoVs and none of them make any sense in terms of who is standing where, who is fighting who, and even who is dead by the end. I wasn’t even sure if anyone died or how; I had to reread and then use context to figure out what happened. It reminded me of the ending fight in Bright, but in book form, and it was not a good note to end on. 

Pacing:

It’s difficult to talk about the problems about this book because they feed into each-other. But the overarching one, the one that makes everything else that much worse, is this book’s piss poor pacing. 

At 300 pages, it is simply too short for what it’s trying to accomplish. Everything feels rushed; character relationships come out of nowhere, motivations change with no hints, and most importantly, the world-building comes of as shallow, because there’s just not enough time to properly develop it. 

Let’s take for example the geography. There is no sense of where any of these characters are, where they are going or even how large the land they are traveling is. Tranavia and Kalyazin border each other, but they also border a third country, Akola. According to the map and the way it’s described in the book, Akola is a desert, while Tarnovia and Kalyazin are both water rich, snow-covered tundras and marshlands. How on Earth does this work? 

Then we have scenes where characters just outright teleport. After they escape the monastery, Nadya and her gang hide-out in a church that’s not too far away. They see Serafin pass by them on his way back to the capital Grazyk. In the next scene, Serefin is already past the Tarnavian border and in the next, he’s in the palace. In between we cut back to Nadya and her gang, figuring out how to get to Grazyk, as Serefin is in the palace, but it takes them 3 WEEKS to get there. Not only that, but in that day that Serefin took to travel, the Vultures came to the church from the palace and back, so… did Seferin become the Flash? Or did Nadya and the others take a Fellowship style detour to get to Tarnavia? It’s not like time is of the essence or anything. 

Then, during this 3 week journey not only does Nadya become extremely close with Malachiaz, Parijahan and Rashid, but she learns perfect Travarian, enough to fool the High Prince himself, learned enough court ethics and rituals to pass as a noble, and yet  somehow didn’t learn that the duels fought during this tournament would be to the death? Also we never SEE any of this bonding; we get a scene where the gang decides to go and then the next scene they are at the border. This would have been perfect time to have us see her interactions with Malachiasz, have him show his true colors some more, explain why they are so drawn to each other. But no, we just teleport into the palace and now I’m supposed to believe that this girl who has been indoctrinated to kill all heretics is in love with one. 

Religion:

This book relies HEAVILY on religion. Duncan has attempted to craft a world where there are two utterly incompatible schools of thought, that will ultimately happen to coincide. It’s an admirable goal, and I think the attempt was good, but there are major, major flaws. 

The first and biggest flaw were the actual Gods. I was severely disappointed by little presence they had in the book. They are supposed to be constantly in Nadya’s head speaking to her, guiding her, bickering about her, but we get so little of that. They are also supposed to have different personalities and react differently to Nadya praying to them. 

We establish for example that some Gods don’t want to help her. I assumed this would lead to scenes where they would not give her magic or give her the wrong kind of magic which would have consequences, but that never happens. The closest we get is an admittedly pretty entertaining scene where one of the Goddesses just plunges everything into darkness for 15 mins (the moon, the stars, everything). But outside of that, even the uncooperative Gods cooperate. 

Marzenya, Nadya’s patron Goddess is the Goddess of Death and Destruction and she hates the Tarnavians. With that kind of pedigree, you’d think she’d be more instrumental in the plot, like maybe take over Nadya, or interfere or punish, or even just speak to her when Nadya would be in an intimate moment with Malachiaz. What we get instead is that sometimes she would chastise Nadya for not having killed him yet.  I can’t believe I’m saying this, but the Darkling was a much more effective cockblock in <i>Siege and Storm</i> and most of the time he wasn’t even speaking! 

The Gods aren’t even present for the second half of the book; once the group gets to Travania Nadya can’t even hear them anymore. 

Then there’s the actual philosophy, and Nadya’s beliefs. She is at once indoctrinated and unwavering in her beliefs that ALL Tarnavians are heretics, and that they deserve to have genocide enacted upon them. She is hypocritical enough to think that Tarnavians torturing prisoners of war is worse than her very own clerics hunting down and systematically killing any woman who can do magic not blessed by the Gods. And yet, she is somehow willing and able to have a discussion about the Gods being fake? 

First off, the Gods should be enraged that she is even entertaining the idea that they might not be divine. Second, Nadya’s faith isn’t a nebulous, intangible thing; she can speak to the Gods, and when she prays they GRANT her magic. For her, whether the Gods exist or not, should be like arguing whether the sun will rise or not; it’s just an unavoidable fact of existence. She is a fanatic: she has been raised in a monastery, taught to hate and want to kill all Tarnavians, and has just witnessed the destruction of everything she knew and loved by those same Tarnavians. She should be constantly trying to kill Malachiasz, not have philosophical discussions with him. Not to mention her flirting and sympathizing with Serefin, who need I remind you KILLED half of the monastery and as far as she knows killed her best friend!

The Tarnavians don’t fare any better. The book makes it seem like they destroyed the Gods in Tarnovia so they could seize power of their own, but why would they want to invade and destroy Kalyazin? There is a line at the beginning about how the war has something to do with geography, not just a religion but we never see it. If anything, it would make more sense that Kalyazin would wage holy war on Tarnovia, not the other way around. 

Plot:

I’m not going to lie; the first half of the book, I really liked the plot. I thought the mystery of who was ruling the Vultures, what was wrong with the King, what was happening at the Salt Mines and what had happened to Malachiasz was all interesting. But as the book went on and as we got some answers, I realized more and more that I was just reading the Grisha Trilogy on shuffle. 

First the political plot. This whole section had so much potential to be really interesting, but it was wasted time. I can imagine a whole book, perhaps even book 2 in this very series that would focus on Serefin, Ostya and Kacper trying to navigate a tight political atmosphere, and uncover what is happening with the King and the Vultures and the Salt Mines. Something like, oh I don’t know <i>A Gathering of Shadows</i>. Instead the three weeks  that Serefin spends in the completely glossed over, he never figures anything out by himself, and even traveling to the Salt Mines is done off page, by a completely irrelevant character! Not to mention how predictable the answers to what is happening with the King, and where the missing contestants are from the moment he steps in the castle. 

The mystery involving Malachiasz was a slightly better; I definitely picked up on the two hints we get about who he is to Serefin, but I really did not see the main twist. However, the ending was so obvious and so painfully predictable, that it was like reading a Darkling origin story mixed with a bit of Nikolaj. 

This book is trying so hard to be the Grisha series, but it fails to realize how tightly realized that world was, and that the characters were properly set up, which is why their characterizations and motivations worked, and even it stumbled with it’s villain. Here, it’s like Duncan started to tell a different story and then jammed it into the Grisha mold, like forcing a square peg into the circle slot. 

Characterization:

This was by far the most frustrating part of the book. First off, there are WAY too many characters who are given equal relevance in a book this short. Characters like Father Alexei, Kostya and Anya are completely useless: they are never useful or relevant and their plot only boggs down the already bloated cast. 

Then we have characters like Ostya, Kacper, Parijahan and Rashid who seem like they will be relevant and are absolutely not. Ostya was just Ojka from <i>A Gathering of Shadows</i>; her only character trait is that she’s gay. Kacper doesn’t even get that; I thought he might either turn out to be a love interest or possibly a turncoat but he’s neither, and we don’t even know what happens to him by the time the book ends. Rashid is in the book to get injured twice and then disappear; he and Kacper were interchangeable in their roles. Parijahan at least gets a backstory, but even still she is mostly pointless and we never learn why she wants to kill the King or trusts Malachiasz. 

King Izac was a mix between the King in the Grisha series and Osaron. There could have been some emotional impact about him changing into this bloodthirsty monster if he wasn’t a cartoon villain or we had any knowledge of what he was like before he changed, but we never see it.

Then we have our main trio. Let’s start with Nikolaj, I mean Serefin. I will give two props: he is NOT involved in a love triangle, and he can do magic, so he’s not a complete damsel. However, he is also every other sexualy ambigous, spoiled, bratty alcoholic who hides a deeper backstory involving daddy issues and an inferiority complex.  

The thing that absolutely pissed me off about Serefin is that he seems to have a split personality. Early on, there is a scene where he tortures someone for information, and we are lead to believe that that character will be important. He then kills someone who was a prisoner of war, and very nonchalantly orders his men to take the rest of the prisoners who may I remind you are monks, to the Salt Mines which are essentially a concentration camp. He makes several notes how he doesn’t care about Kalyazin and is generally uninterest in human life or ruling. 

So you think, oh he’s going to be a jaded villain, or at the very least an antihero. But he’s not, he’s a full on protagonist! And I don’t mean he's a flawed character you root for; once we get to the palace, Serefin does a complete 180 and he’s suddenly good, and compassionate, and he wants to end the war, and cares about lives. Where did we see that? 

Moreover, Nadya who was there when the monastery was destroyed, who saw him kill people and as far as she knows saw him kill Kostya, allies with him in the span of a page, and the proceeds to flirt and banter and feel sorry for him! 

Look, I’m not Nikolaj’s biggest fan, but at the very least he was written to care about Ravka, to be patriotic, to feel guilt over killing or torturing people and you know what else he didn’t do? Execute prisoners of war! 

I already covered Nadya’s inconsistent faith, and how easily manipulated and de-doctrinated she is, but she is just fucking stupid. She spends the whole book thinking about how much she doesn’t trust Malachiasz, about how he’s lying or at the very least hiding something. And then, she falls for him, and ends up initiating a relationship after he kills someone before her! Mind you, it’s his fault she was even fighting in hat duel, because he conveniently forgets to mention all duels are to the death (not to mention her being enough of an idiot to rise to such a provocation, when she should very well know not to do that or care because a) her hair is glamoured, b) she was raised in a freaking monastery).

There is also a really stupid subplot about Malachiasz trying to convince her that she shouldn’t live by the Gods’ predetermined destiny for her, but the Gods never make her do anything. They never force her or punish her from what we see, and even the monastery isn’t ever specified to be of celibate nature; they are a coed monastery ffs. Nadya is also very conveniently forgetful about the whole killing Tarnavians for someone who has dedicated their whole life to destroying their kingdom. 

And finally, Malachiasz. I mean… he’s just the Darkling. A bargain brand copy of the Darkling, with none of the appeal, and that’s coming from someone who didn't like the Darkling. I found him incompetent at best and an idiot at worst. But at least I understood his appeal: he is an incredibly powerful, near immortal, God of a man. He is attractive, he is untouchable and manipulative and he selects Alina who is hungry for power and attention, and wants to be extraordinary. 

Nadya is not that. She has been extraordinary; she is literary the chosen one. She’s not unsure of herself or her path; she has been on it since the day she was admitted at the monastery. She already knows how to fight, she has immense powers and can speak to a full pantheon of Gods. So not only would Malachiasz not pose any appeal to her, she is actively taught to hate and fear people like him. 

When the twist happens and we realize that Malachiasz has really been the Black Vulture and evil all this time, it didn’t feel shocking or earned; it felt predictable, because it wasn’t earned. There are no moments in the book where we are lead to believe he has hidden intentions. He doesn’t have telling lines of dialogue about power and wanting and weakness like the Darkling did in <i>Siege and Storm</i>. Outside of being a little trigger happy, he shows no signs of not being 100% behind the idea of killing the King, so when Nadya has her big oh shit he was evil all along moment, it feels cheap. 

The transformation at the end genuinely felt like this should be the Darkling’s origin story. The part that really irked me was the whole bit with the name; that is just outright a plot point stolen from the Grisha trilogy and it was so blatant, and so unnecessary. It was exactly the ending I expected from this book: unoriginal, messy and confusing. 

Overall I don’t recommend this book. It’s only appeal to me was seeing if the ending could redeem it, but unfortunately, it was just a mess. The characters aren’t developed, the plot is rushed, and the religion was poorly thought out. Just reread the Grisha series instead; I guarantee you will enjoy it more.

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