Siege & Storm
Leigh Bardugo || Publication Date - 04.06.2013

The world is changing, revelations have come to light and now Alina and Mal are on the run.

Drama | Literary Fiction | Mystery

Alina and Mal have escaped a harrowing and eye opening ordeal in The Fold, and are now on the run to try and find the remaining Amplifiers to complete Alina's goal - destroy The Dark One.

They find themselves sailing with a brigand of privateers under the watchful and respected eyes of Sturmhund. All while being stalked by The Dark One, who has emerged from The Fold with a new unnaturally strong power and a need to regain his control of the Sun Summoner.

Alina has some choices to make. Grow her power and continue to seek out the Amplifiers. Remain on the run with Mal, constantly being hunted by The Dark One. Or, surrender to The Dark One and allow him to take control of her and her powers for his own twisted plans.

The Review (may contain spoilers)

This book was a step in the right direction considering the first book. More interesting (my favourite actually) characters are introduced into the story and character development runs rampant. However, I believe in the case of Alina and Mal, this character development is just running in circles asking the same questions until the book passes to the 3rd instalment.

I enjoyed the continuation and, explicitly, this section of the plot compared to the first book. It had more action, it was written a lot smoother and had a genuine feel of developing substantial character relationships. The world development however lacked here, and even though it did give a grander scale to Ravka which would be explored in the following book, I felt that it was not nearly enough to give enough of an urgency as the book seemed to require.

Unfortunately I don't seem to have much more to say for this book as I did the first... which is disappointing as I was expecting the 2nd book in the trilogy to really set the stage for the finale novel and give the push forward this story deserves.

Overall Thoughts

In my opinion this book was a fine continuation of the story. As stated it had a lot more elements to it than the first but I still don't think it bridged the gap as well as it should have when I compare it to the next volume.

If you have read the first book and enjoyed it, I would not be reserved to recommend to read this one as well. However, if you did not enjoy Shadow & Bone, I wouldn't recommend continuing. I feel the other books in the Grishaverse are more worth the time and energy than what is essentially a prologue spread out over 3 books.