Get Ready For Shadow And Bone With Only 6 Days Left To Go!

A lot of people are going to be rushing to Netflix next Friday to binge-watch the entire first season of Shadow And Bone as soon as it drops, but only a portion of that audience will have a chance to read or even page-skim through the entirety of the series’ literary source-material in the six days we have left before the hotly-anticipated premiere. But that’s okay, because I’m here to give you the rundown of everything you need to know about the world of Leigh Bardugo’s twin series’ of fantasy novels, the Shadow And Bone trilogy and the Six Of Crows duology, and the premise of the Netflix show, which will draw inspiration from the first books of both series’.

Shadow And Bone
Alina Starkov | tvinsider.com

The expansive world of Bardugo’s novels, dubbed the “Grishaverse” by fans and author alike, is largely similar to the Europe and West Asia of our own, but for the most part grounded in the aesthetics, societal norms, and steam and gas-powered technology, of the late 1800’s. Some might call this steampunk, but Bardugo coined the more unique term “Tzarpunk” to describe the setting of her debut novel, Shadow And Bone, and its direct sequels, which take place in the northerly region of Ravka – unmistakably influenced by Russia under the final Tzars, from the opulent lifestyle of the country’s royalty all the way down to the brutal oppression of the working class. If history is doomed to repeat itself even in fantasy, then Ravka is in for a communist revolution any day now.

But while Ravka is a straight-up monarchy, the true power lies in the hands of the Grisha – an elite, militarized order of humans gifted with the ability to manipulate or alter matter. And although the Grisha describe their “magic” as being scientific in nature (and a bunch of them are employed only for their ability to de-age Ravka’s upper class), the misconception that they’re a coven of evil witches persists among the general population, and they are widely hated and feared. Nonetheless, they make up a small but deadly faction of Ravka’s army, and they get to live in a palace near the capital.

The Grisha are also quartered off into numerous subdivisions, something I hope the Netflix adaptation explores in-depth – because J.K. Rowling ruined Hogwarts Houses for a lot of people, so we need a new method of separating personality types by way of pop culture references…and “Heartrender” sounds a lot cooler than Hufflepuff anyway, I’m just saying. But there’s one person in a category of her own, and that’s Alina Starkov, Shadow And Bone‘s protagonist. The only Sun-Summoner in the world, Starkov has the ability to control light – a power-set that might seem of limited use until you remember that Ravka is split down the middle by a literal ink-stain on the map, a wall of darkness named the Shadow-Fold.

Blocking most trade between Ravka’s coast and its more densely-populated interior, the Shadow-Fold can only be traversed by tiny skiffs that must pass through the wall and avoid encountering the horrific winged demons that roam in the darkness, known as Volcra. Shadow And Bone kicks off with Alina Starkov, still just a humble mapmaker conscripted into Ravka’s non-Grisha army, joining one of these routine trips through the Fold: and when she discovers that she’s a sentient nightlight that could potentially eradicate the Shadow-Fold entirely, well, things happen. This post is free of any major spoilers about the books, so I’ll refrain from saying what those “things” are, but come on, the show’s only six days away, people! Be patient!

Shadow And Bone
Jesper Fahey, Kaz Brekker, and Inej Ghafa | popculture.com

Just a few years after the events of Shadow And Bone and its sequels, Six Of Crows picks up the story in a vastly different corner of the Grishaverse, in the bustling, grimy, canal-laced port-city of Ketterdam, separated from Ravka by many miles and an entire ocean. Modeled off of Amsterdam at the peak of Dutch imperialism in the 1600’s but with a bit of Bardugo’s signature Tzarpunk mixed in, Ketterdam is home to several street-gangs which fight for control over the flow of imports and exports through the city’s docks, trade-districts, and markets.

When Six Of Crows opens, the gang known as the Dregs (who operate out of the infamous Crow Club) are already a feared and respected force in Ketterdam’s criminal underworld, thanks to the strategizing skills of their highest-ranking member, Kaz Brekker. To account for the time-gap between Bardugo’s two series’, the first season of Netflix’s Shadow And Bone won’t be adapting Six Of Crows, but will instead follow the founding members of the gang prior to the events of their book – or at least, so Netflix says. A recent trailer (my breakdown linked below, but watch out for spoilers!) revealed that Netflix is basically just using the plot of Six Of Crows but weaving it into the events of Shadow And Bone in a bold and risky move that I hope pays off.

In the books, the strongest link between the two series’ is the character of Nina Zenik, a Grisha from Ravka who gets taken captive by her nation’s unfriendly neighbors to the north, the Fjerdans – specifically by a group of Fjerdan religious zealots named the drüskelle, who despise the Grisha. Nina’s interactions with them lead to her eventually finding refuge in Ketterdam and joining the Dregs, and her knowledge of Fjerda helps the gang when they take on their most dangerous mission ever as a team – to break into a heavily-fortified Fjerdan palace and abduct a valuable prisoner. A waffle-loving bisexual style icon, Nina unfortunately seems to only play a small part in Shadow And Bone‘s first season.

Shadow And Bone
Kaz Brekker | cbr.com

Sure, there’s a couple of world-building details I’ve left out, but that’s essentially all you need to know about the Grishaverse before watching Netflix’s Shadow And Bone. I mean, technically, you shouldn’t even need to know anything because a good adaptation allows even the most casual viewer to ease into the story, but hey – if I can exploit the fact that very few adaptations remember that golden rule, I will absolutely continue to do so because I have fun writing these breakdowns, and they drive traffic to my blog (*prides himself on his Kaz Brekker-like business savvy and exits, pursued by disgruntled readers*).

“Shadow And Bone” 2nd Trailer!

SPOILERS FOR SHADOW AND BONE AND SIX OF CROWS AHEAD!

In all my coverage of Netflix’s upcoming Shadow And Bone adaptation, my one consistent concern has been how the series is going to juggle the various components of its sprawling story. While its title is borrowed from the fairly straightforward first book in the Grisha trilogy, Leigh Bardugo’s bestselling YA fantasy series, the Netflix adaptation is also drawing on material from Bardugo’s later (and, in my opinion, superior) Six Of Crows duology, set in the same fantasy world but in a different region, at a different time. To better link the two, Netflix is compressing the timeline and creating original storylines for the Six Of Crows characters that will bring them into contact with Grisha trilogy characters they never met in the books.

Shadow And Bone
Shadow And Bone | polygon.com

The task seems daunting. The Grisha trilogy takes place in the Russian-inspired country of Ravka, where an orphaned girl named Alina Starkov discovers that she’s the Sun-Summoner, a magical being capable of creating light – and thus powerful enough to save Ravka from the terrible Shadow Fold, an ocean of pure shadow that cuts an ugly rift through the country. The Six Of Crows duology, set years later in the Amsterdam-inspired city of Ketterdam, follows a ragtag band of criminals, nicknamed the Crows, who unite to kidnap a mage and score a hefty reward. Tonally, the two stories share little in common…and while a handful of characters overlap, they are both very much their own thing.

But the second full trailer for Netflix’s Shadow And Bone reveals the series’ solution to that problem…which, as far as solutions go, seems to me like one that comes with massive risks and the potential to completely derail the storyline of the books as time goes on. The Crows will simply unite to kidnap Alina Starkov herself.

We’ve known for a while now that we weren’t gonna get a literal adaptation of Six Of Crows in this first season of Shadow And Bone. The series is still focused on Alina and the events of her books. The Crows were always going to be playing secondary roles in this season, with the promise that their roles would be upgraded in season two, when their story could actually take off. But with this new development, I don’t understand the point in doing the actual Six Of Crows storyline anymore, even in season two…because they’re already basically using it as a season one subplot, heightening the stakes dramatically while recentering it around Alina.

I’d actually be very surprised if the story from Six Of Crows were to be adapted at this point, because I think I can begin to guess what Shadow And Bone is doing…and why, while I think it’s a gamble even Jesper Fahey would shy away from, it might just pay off.

Shadow And Bone
Mal and Alina (Malina) | syfy.com

Just as it feels like the Crows’ individual arcs are being reworked to fit into Alina’s story in season one, I believe the opposite might be true of season two…which, rather than following the events of Six Of Crows, may actually lift more heavily from the book’s sequel (and my favorite of Bardugo’s Grishaverse stories), Crooked Kingdom. In that book, the Crows return to Ketterdam with their kidnapped prize, only to be betrayed by their client and embroiled in a war of subterfuge and deceit in the city’s criminal underworld. If that’s the case, it’s unfair we wouldn’t see a more accurate adaptation of these stories – but it’s already unfair that Shadow And Bone still includes Mal, one of the worst love interests in literary history.

There’s evidence for this theory in the trailer. The Crows still receive their offer from a mustachioed older gentleman who appears to be Jan Van Eck, their backstabbing client from the books. Mal tells Alina at one point that he’ll find his way back to her if they’re ever separated, implying strongly that they will be (I see no issue with that, gotta be honest). And while the Crows don’t have much screentime in the trailer, it looks like they make it to Ravka: we see Inej Ghafa evading a jet of fire that could only have been cast by a Grisha magician, and moments later she appears to be in the Shadow-Fold itself, looking dashing while throwing knives at an unseen enemy – perhaps a Volcra demon?

We also know that Alina’s backstory in the series has been changed to make her biracial and half Shu Han (an East Asian-inspired region bordering Ravka), a change reflected in the decision to cast an actress of Chinese descent in the role. The showrunners have cited multiple reasons for this change, one of which being that it lends depth to her arc. But it could also make her taking over the role of Kuwei Yul-Bo – the Crows’ kidnapping victim, and the only prominent Shu Han character in the books – more plausible.

Obviously, the Crows kidnapping Alina and bringing her back to Ketterdam would have massive consequences…but if I’m being honest, I think Alina’s character would benefit a lot from the change. The Grisha trilogy gets kind of boring when it devolves into love-triangulations in book two, so it would be refreshing to see Alina separated from both her love interests for a minute and placed in a completely new scenario, before possibly returning to Ravka by way of the seafaring Prince Nikolai, who appears in the second books of both series’. And I won’t deny that the thought of her interacting with the Crows excites me greatly.

Shadow And Bone
Alina and Baghra | themarysue.com

The only question is how the Crows would benefit from this change, from having Alina and the Darkling (and Mal, I guess) constantly barging in on their storylines – and, as someone with a Crows bias, that’s the question that gives me pause and makes me wonder if it’s actually worth it. I also would like to know why the Crows still only have three members, and why Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar don’t even seem to have real storylines in this season (Nina does at least have a cut hat).

Shadow And Bone still looks very promising and well-produced, however, and I’m excited to see if anything can make me interested in the events of the Grisha trilogy. I’m not totally sold on Six Of Crows being used as a subplot in Alina Starkov’s story, but if it means Crooked Kingdom (or some version of that story) might be the focus of season two, you better believe I’m gonna grin and bear it.

Trailer Rating: 8/10