Early Thoughts on Shadow and Bone

Right, well, I’m 34 pages along on Leigh Bardugo’s New York Times bestseller Shadow and Bone. I’d heard overwhelmingly good things about this book, which is a YA fantasy set in (more or less) Russia.

Slavic folklorish fantasy? I thought. I’m in.

I should have skimmed the summary before picking this up. That’s what I get for blindly trusting a high Goodreads rating and some undeserved publicity. I’ll explain that thought process in a bit.

I began cringing when I got home from the bookstore and found myself mired in the opening pages of an unnecessary prologue. The whole thing is distant and rife with overtelling—just read the first paragraphs, readily available from Amazon’s book preview. Some people I don’t know are introduced, nothing happens, and then the prologue ends on a shift in perspective to this ominous Duke who raises the young orphaned main characters, Ana and Mal. 

Whatever. Really, really poor editing choice, but how much worse can it get?

Now, if I were writing a book on Russian culture, I might have researched said Russian culture beforehand. For instance, my main character, Alina Starkov, would have had a feminine last name like, oh, I don’t know, Starkova. It’s a Slavic thing. The Polish do it too; if I lived in Poland, my last name would be Kowalska instead of Kowalski.

Well, I didn’t write this book. Bardugo did. And Bardugo did some sloppy as shit research on the matter.

She named a collective group of apparently intimidating people Grisha. Grisha is just the diminutive form (i.e. nickname) of the Russian name Grigorij. That’s Gregory in English. Grisha in English, by logical extension, is Greg.

So that group of scary magic people… is named Greg.

If I’d taken a moment to read the summary, I would have seen both these things and would have passed on this book. Sigh sigh sigh.

Bardugo also writes on page 16:

Sticks. I hated that name. You didn’t call me Sticks when you were drunk on kvas and trying to paw me at the spring bonfire, you miserable oaf, I thought spitefully

Now, this is just a beautiful, beautiful sentence. Alina’s bitching that her friend Mikhael affectionately called her Sticks instead of getting over herself and telling him to stop. Mm, passive aggression.

Anyway, let’s pause to dissect this gem.

The first error is simply factual. I’ve had kvas. It tastes like nonalcoholic beer because that’s exactly what it is. You can’t get drunk on kvas. The alcohol content (about 0.5% - 1%) is so low that Russians don’t even consider it an alcoholic drink. You would have to drink barrels and barrels of the stuff to get even slightly inebriated.

I don’t know if she was trying to buck the vodka stereotype or what, but she could have spent five fucking seconds on the Wikipedia article on the matter.

This sentence is also an example of Leigh’s mediocre writing skills. Or, perhaps more accurately, it’s an example of her editor’s grossly subpar editing skills. This is a first draft worthy sentence. It’s repetitive—“I thought spitefully” tacked onto a clearly spiteful statement; “I hated that name,” clearly you do—and very weakly written, particularly in the show vs. tell department. I dislike when authors tell me their character’s feelings on a matter rather than showing me. Yes, italicizing thoughts is telling. If you literally have to pluck thoughts out of the narrator’s head again and again to tell me what’s going on, you’re not writing very well. 

So, bad sentence. One of many. I have an even better one.

I read this sentence waiting for my English 257 class to start and was redpenning the shit out of it. Someone gave me a horrified look for Writing In A Book, but it was needed.

This bit is when monster things are attacking Alina and her buddies. It’s on page 31, if you’re following along at home.

I heard a shrill wail and watched in horror as a soldier was lifted from his feet and carried into the air, kicking and struggling.

Where was Bargudo’s editor in all this mess? Getting drunk on kvas?

Let me illustrate to you why I hate this sentence, if you’re not seeing it.

First things first, simple construction. There’s a misplaced modifier at the end there, as I assume the air was not “kicking and struggling.” The idiom “lifted from his feet” has always bothered me, because I imagine him flitting up into the air on ankle stumps and leaving his feet behind on the deck. Pet peeve? Definitely.

Secondly, raging cliche. “Watched in horror”? Please. No more.

Finally, this whole sentence is just incredibly passive, a trait which applies to the rest of this shoddy action sequence. There is obvious passive voice, “a soldier was lifted,” but the rest of it is less immediately obvious. 

While Alina is not immediately involved in the action, that doesn’t mean that her perspective should bottleneck this fight. Her secondhand account, hearing and watching in horror, makes this whole scene very, very slow. It dramatically affects the pace, as things aren’t happening. Alina is observing things happening.

Then, predictably, the chapter ends with the narrator passing out and not waking up with a concussion or any other lasting physical repercussions commonly associated with your brain turning off.

I’m so disappointed, is what I’m saying.