#it's the magic of baghra's bitchiness

[minetteskvareninova]

I have to say, Baghra’s attempt at Sasha’s life reads less like a tragic parent figure doing what needs to be done, even if it has to be done to their own child, and more like Stalin letting his oldest son die in a concentration camp. Like, it would’ve been a tough choice for anyone else, but what luck, she’s a terrible parent who doesn’t love her kid!

[lilisouless]

sorry, i know you are sick of my self promo already but i am still copping, i am not feeling okay like the rest of the world

Chapter 1.

Alina peppersprays Mal´s face

Alina drives a tied up Mal and threatens him with a taser

Chapter 2

Kaz steals Alina´s car keys

Genya, affectionately, calls Mal a cheap whore

Morozov almost rolls over Alina with his car

Chapter 3

Alina takes tea with Colm

Mal ask Alina to a "no date" and says goodbye before forgeting he never asked where she is staying

Morozov reveals his magic to Alina, who runs away the second the turns his back

Chapter 4

Alina believes she must be on a prank or gasligthing tv show , so she asks Mal to take off his shirt to search for a mic, then quickly stops him cause "i am not giving those pigs some fanservice material"

Mal licks a piece of a statue to prove what material it´s make off

Alina makes a list of the citizens she met-the characters they may be playing and Kaz´s section is:

- Karl Baz Klark Vanz    Kaz (written by Mal)- unknown (altought he might be Shrek) 

Chapter 5

Alina and Mal break into Kaz & Zoya´s house, they are busted because they took two candies from a jar and Zoya has them counted

In Kaz´s room, they find a note in a drawer while he is absent: ”Looking throught my stuff, Miss Starvoka,That´s a dissapointment, i was expecting better from you PS: If Oretsev is with you, tell him that from him i didn't expect better"

They find a wand that turns out to be a bubble bottle in Kaz´s hiddings

Chapter 6

(Simplified) Morozov: And Alina, this is very important, don't say a word of this to Mal (cut) Mal: not a word to Mal?!

Mal chases a fox that has Alina´s keys on it´s mouth

Mal encounters Baghra being the bitchy old lady she is (aka he gets insulted and hit with a cane a lot)

Chapter 7

Alina has lunch with Ohval but she fears the food is poisoned so she has to throw it in plants or under her shirt

Mal throws himself in the fountain and cuts his pants into shorts to prove he doesn’t have microphones

Morozov has to force himself to awkwardly and reclutantly hug Mal as a thank you for helping Ulla (both are completely disgusted)

Chapter 8

Kaz steals a watch from a dead man in his funeral

Zoya offering her lawyer services to the widowed woman while she is crying on the same funeral

Alina sticks her hand on the corpse’s mouth to make sure it’s real

Chapter 9

Kaz gets in a fight by saying a “your mother” joke

Mal and Alina being jealous from a distance , so unsubtle that Ulla only can look in disappointment

The names shown on the graves: Per Haskell, Dominik Vertov, Ylva Brum, Jordie Rietveld,Wylan Hendriks,Isaak Andreyev , a triple thombstone

Chapter 10

Alina stealing food from a funeral,then Hanne also stealing some from Mila

Mila stabbing a raggedy mouse chanting “bad Zak,bad Zak”

Hanne making a flower crown for Mila

(More things happen but i consider them too serious to call them random shit)

Chapter 11

First thing Nina does after being freed, is dolling herself up in the mirror

Kaz taking care of a drunk Zoya

Ivan and Fruszi being disgusted of having to act like a couple and finding a loophole so they don’t have to kiss

[serpenteve]

king of scars rant 💅🏽

cw: spoilers for king of scars

Honestly, I hated this book.

The Lore

I definitely hated how this book pretty much retconned the original trilogy and made it all but pointless. So Alina had to lose her powers because there are comic limits to Grisha power but Zoya can turn into a fucking dragon and become the avatar now?

The Shadow Fold had to be destroyed because it made Ravka weak but now it's open season on Ravka without the Fold holding their enemies back and every other week, there's some new assassination attempt from Shu Han or an open declaration of war from Fjerda or blackmailing debt-collectors from Kerch? How is Ravka still functioning, honestly?

Nikolai

I'm sorry, Nikolai, but this book actually made me low-key hate you. Like, the narrative wants so badly to prove me to me that he isn't like other imperialist monarchs! He....remembers people's names and fights alongside them!!!

Another character in this book (Isaak) spends the majority of his narrative idolizing Nikolai and trying to be like him and talking about how amazing he was to his family and then when he dies........Nikolai barely even gives a fuck? I got the sense this friendship was entirely one-sided.

Also, why is this marketed as a Nikolai duology and named after him when he's barely the main character and has to share the narration with 3 other characters---one of which is literally occupying the same locations as him? 🤨

Zoya

Oof, where to even begin with this one.

Listen, I would have been 100% on board with this book being entirely focused on Zoya. She's the real protagonist in my opinion so the fact that had to share the narrative with 3 other people (including one person who doesn't even influence the main plot and another who gets discarded by the end) was really bringing down the potential of her story.

Because there wasn't enough room for her character development, everything about her arc is completely rushed. Like, she can fire-bend and bee-bend in the span of 3 hours? WELL OKAY THEN. Oh, she can just turn into a fucking dragon now because she opened some random ass door in her mind? WELL OKAY THEN.

I hate hate hate it when female characters get accused of being Mary Sues but there's something to be said when we're jumping heads and everyone is just like "Wow, Zoya is so pretty, Zoya is so badass, Zoya is so cool" while not really having any real consequences for her flaw. Like, we all know Zoya can be bitchy and mean (and we love that about her 😌) but....she pretty much gets away it with and doesn't face any backlash for it. Add this to the fact that she becomes the Grisha avatar with very little training on her part and voila. The entire world of the Grishaverse bends its rules and reality around her in typical Sue fashion.

Nina

Girl, what was even the point of your story? I kept waiting and waiting and waiting, stupidly assuming that her story would somehow merge with the main one but it never came.

We learn that things are still shit for Grisha. The Shu are kidnapping them and making them into crazy supersoldiers and Fjerda are getting them addicted to some parem variant to create their own Grisha slave army from birth?

Why on earth would being a Grisha at the Little Palace be a choice in this world? It's either you become a soldier in the Second Army or....you get a fate worse than death. Wouldn't the atrocities committed against Grisha radicalize most Grisha anyway? Like, sign me the fuck up, I want to kick some ass against people trying to literally experiment on me???

Nina's necromancer powers were pretty badass though, not gonna lie 🙌🏽

Isaak

Isaak was honestly the best part of this whole dumpster book and then he gets killed for no reason. And Nikolai doesn't even give a fuck?

Why introduce this new character if we're just going to use and discard him? I kept wondering why we were getting palace updates from a new character instead of just using Genya or Tamar's perspective.

Also, the whole thing with princess Ehri was a bit racist to me? Like we have a Chinese-coded character being a deceptive backstabber (or front-stabber in this case lol) and nearly dies while giving off some serious dragon lady vibes. I get the sense she did die in the original draft and some editor was probably like "Hmm, well maybe we shouldn't have another dead POC" so she survives. At least she didn't speak in broken English like Botkin 🤷🏽‍♀️

The (Anti) Climax

This was easily the most anti-climactic ending to a Grishaverse book I've read. It's a shame because it has all the elements that could have made it badass? Like we've got saints with god-like powers but Zoya easily defeats Elizaveta by suddenly unlocking fire-bending, bee-bending, and transforming into a fucking dragon. I just can't take it seriously.

Elizaveta herself was too easily distracted as a villain. What the hell even happens to the saints when they die in this place? Do all their miracles that affect the rest of the world just disappear? Who knows. The book ends with Fjerda declaring war and a failed assassination attempt by a Shu Han princess.

Yuri & the Darkling

And finally this brings me whatever mess is going on with Yuri and the Darkling. I get the sense Leigh was super pissed with Darkling stans and created this weird strawman with Yuri's character. Honestly, I thought he was kinda funny because I'm sure even without real-world fans simping for the Darkling, there would certainly be people in the Grishaverse who would gravitate towards the Darkling and see him as a savior of sorts, especially with the world's Grisha being arguably worse after his death and the destruction of the Fold.

What bothered me was the bizarre preachiness of the other characters. Like Yuri literally only exists so that Zoya and Nikolai can take turns being like "Actually, Yuri aka Darklina stan placeholder, the Darkling was the VILLAIN of the series and you were just too stupid to see it, etc"

...Like, girl, we know he's the villain 🤦🏽‍♀️ If we're going to create a character just to preach to Darkling stans, then why does the entire plot revolve around trying to bring him back into the story? It's like Leigh has a weird love-hate relationship with the Darkling. She hates him and she hates his fan club but she still needs him because otherwise there's no magical plot conflict.

Fridge Logic

If there is no limit to Grisha power and you can just take however much you want from the heart at the making of the world, why the hell did Alina get punished for the amplifier nonsense in the original trilogy?

If the saint's powers are limited to the edges of the Fold, how are they able to manipulate stuff outside of it?

Juris claims when you properly possess an amplifier, you become a living amplifier in return. So is how the Darkling and Baghra became living amplifiers? Or is that just still some unexplained merzost nonsense from Illya Morozova?

What the hell even considered merzost now with all this retcon?

If the Darkling can possess Yuri and magically transform his features to be his own, then why did he need his own body?

And if he can change people's features by possessing them, why did Nikolai get to keep his?

Why did the obisbaya ritual fail in the first place?

Prose

The only positive is that the prose is like a million times better than the original trilogy, but considering how terrible the original is, I suppose that's not really saying much.