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Siege and Storm (The Shadow and Bone Trilogy, #2)

Leigh Bardugo

Start date: June 1, 2021

Finish date: June 30, 2021

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What Members Thought

Dec 10, 2017 krista ☽✧ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

“Watch yourself, Nikolai,” Mal said softly. “Princes bleed just like other men.”
Nikolai plucked an invisible piece of dust from his sleeve. “Yes,” he said. “They just do it in better clothes.” -king of sarcasm

First time read - 2017 - 4 stars
Second time read- 2019 - 4 stars
third time read- 2021 - 3.75 stars

Unpopular opinion time : I enjoy this more then the first 🙊

Siege and Storm is the second book in the Grisha triology by Leigh Bardugo. This book starts right off where book one has ended “Watch yourself, Nikolai,” Mal said softly. “Princes bleed just like other men.”
Nikolai plucked an invisible piece of dust from his sleeve. “Yes,” he said. “They just do it in better clothes.” -king of sarcasm

First time read - 2017 - 4 stars
Second time read- 2019 - 4 stars
third time read- 2021 - 3.75 stars

Unpopular opinion time : I enjoy this more then the first 🙊

Siege and Storm is the second book in the Grisha triology by Leigh Bardugo. This book starts right off where book one has ended. Alina and Mal are on the run from the darkling , it follows the struggels that come with that and it focuses on Alina struggling with the choices she has made at the end of book one and about her forming a new interesting alliance and getting ready to defeat the darkling once again. This book was definitely different from the first one. I remembered that in my first read I liked this one less then shadow and bone but now after my re-read [ unpopular opinion incoming ] I liked this way more then the first book. I really enjoyed the plot even tho it is slower then the first book. It focuses mostly on politics and making plans which can either be a hit or a miss for me but in this case I really enjoyed it , it kept me hooked. I also enjoyed how Alina struggled with her choices and her being the chosen one. I also enjoyed how she struggled with her powerhunger that came forward in this book , this made her more of a morally grey character and I enjoyed this. In shadow and bone I couldn’t really connect to her but here I liked reading about her more. Even tho I still think she is fucking stupid for running after mal still because he is just so selfish and he just doesn’t accept the version of herself that she is. He wants her to be somebody else but still she runs after him and ugh. Mal annoyed the shit out of me. He is selfish and judges a lot and I just don’t like him. Then we have Nikolai <3 aka my bby. Who definitely made this book enjoyable. He is such an interesting character. He is super sarcastic and sassy which adds humor to the story but I feel like he isn’t just comic , we see more of his struggels and what is be neat all this humor and sarcasm. I really enjoyed him a lot. I also love Genya and David and my heart hurts knowing what was done to my poor Genya. But they need more page time

I also still enjoyed the magic system and worldbuilding. Its good I like the add of the darkling his new powers and that we dive deeper into Morozova and the amplifiers. I also enjoyed Nikolai and Alina their banter. So overall I enjoyed this sequel a lot more then the first book. I liked the politics , the charracters having more depth and still the magic system. However I still don’t like the romance at all. It isn’t even a love triangle anymore it is now a fucking love square and I am not here for it. Like the romance between the Darkling and Alina could be much better if it only focused on , same goes for Nikolai and Alina but that isn’t the case so I am not a fan. I also still don’t like Mal and his character but overall this was a quick fun read and was a little more deep then the first one which I enjoyed , the romance tho I am definitely not a fan off. So well that was it , bye now. ...more

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Jan 25, 2021 aarja rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, overall-good-but-not-too-good, coming-of-age, to-review, feminist, read-but-want, um-ok, boooooooring-sometimes, 2021-reads, 2andhalf-stars

Honestly, this book was fun. Firstly, because Tamar and Tolya and Sturmhond and Nikolai and yay! But what happened in the book? I'm really not sure.

A summary of what the characters do throughout this whole book is below, but I'm not really sure if I got it right since it has been some time since I read this book.

BEWARE OF SPOILERS (you can read the rest after the next divider) 🚨

Mal and Alina are in Novyi Zem after running away from the Darkling
Mal: Wait wait, we have to work.
Alina: *whines* But ...more

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Nov 16, 2018 Fray rated it liked it

Shelves: favorites-2018, read-2020, rereads

Although I do tend to forget 80% of plot lines as soon as I finish a book (I have a terrible memory), apparently I forgot literally every single thing that happened in this book; to the point that I was shocked by every plot twist. Which was nice, because it made the reread more enjoyable, but also shows how forgettable this book is. This book is definitely the worst of the trilogy.

(view spoiler) ...more

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Nov 12, 2020 lookmairead rated it liked it · review of another edition

Hm.
At some points I felt really comfortable giving this book a 4, bc let’s be honest- Grishaverse WOULD be an excellent themed attraction at Universal or Disney.

But at other points, I felt like I was reading molasses.

Meh- I’m STILL invested to read everything Bardugo writes. I just don’t feel the need to binge read this world (like I wanted to for SoC).

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Jul 14, 2020 Andrea rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: wishlist-need, fantasy-other-world

Nikolai is the best thing that happened in this book. Arguably the only one too.

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Jun 07, 2020 Caitlin ~WordsAreMyForte~ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: ya

3.25 stars

Well... This was something alright.

Shadow and Bone was not a book that I sung the praises of, and I was completely expecting the sequel to be the same way. Spoiler alert: I wasn't entirely wrong.

I'm bumping the rating up A SMIDGEN to 3.25 stars, because there was one aspect of Siege and Storm that I found very interesting. Alina has been gradually taking steps further away from her own person mentally throughout this book, and I think her complete transformation is very stark by the e 3.25 stars

Well... This was something alright.

Shadow and Bone was not a book that I sung the praises of, and I was completely expecting the sequel to be the same way. Spoiler alert: I wasn't entirely wrong.

I'm bumping the rating up A SMIDGEN to 3.25 stars, because there was one aspect of Siege and Storm that I found very interesting. Alina has been gradually taking steps further away from her own person mentally throughout this book, and I think her complete transformation is very stark by the ending (view spoiler) This strain of change is also depicted through Mal, and I enjoyed how Alina and Mal had to work through their relationship and learn to adjust to this new life of sainthood.

Among the new characters who are introduced, Nikolai is definitely the most interesting, him being the second Prince of Ravka and supposed bastard of the king's. Tolya and Tamar are Shu Han twins who essentially become Alina's sworn body guards. The Darkling definitely shows up, but I think his role didn't have enough weight to it in the sequel as compared to the first. (view spoiler)

The overall pacing of this second novel was fast in the moment when you are reading, but when I looked back, not much actually happened for most of this book. (view spoiler) Even though I just read over 400 pages, the ending felt like the middle of the book, not the end. I think it would have benefitted with more pages in the middle somewhere with just a bit more world-traveling/intrigue with our characters, so I hope the third book delivers on this. ...more

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Jan 27, 2019 Bryan Cayangcang rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Full review of the trilogy soon once I finish the last book.

This is the second book in the Shadow and Bone trilogy, and I would say that Siege and Storm offered a deeper side of the story. There were big revelations, but I also had my issues with certain characters.

Still, the book gave me enough reasons to finish the series. I'm still obsessing over Alina and I'm excited to see if the questions I had at the end of the book will be answered in Ruin and Rising. ...more

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May 04, 2019 Eva ʕ •ᴥ•ʔ rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Like, I don't know what everyone is talking about.

Okay, yes, it wasn't the bEST book I have ever read. But it had so many things for it.

First of all, can I just say, Nikolai is indeed the only person that deserves love in this cast. His dialogue is soooo good. I'm very glad I preordered King of Scars because I can't wait to read it.

Second, Mal was indeed acting like a little bitch the whole damn time, but why is nobody talking about Alina's behaviour? She kept whining about how the Darkling is ...more

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Dec 13, 2019 OldBird rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fantasy, young-adult

TL;DR: Let's hunt the MacGuffin! (But very slowly so there's a third book). Saved by the compulsive prose.

I'm going to be honest: I didn't think this one started well. Your goods guys got away from the bad guys at the end of the first book - huzzah! Yet within pages they've fallen in to a not very nefariously staged trap and are taken back - boo! The bad guy's gotten even badder in the mean time, having learned some more badassery summoning powers or something. Because he's bad. Did we mention h TL;DR: Let's hunt the MacGuffin! (But very slowly so there's a third book). Saved by the compulsive prose.

I'm going to be honest: I didn't think this one started well. Your goods guys got away from the bad guys at the end of the first book - huzzah! Yet within pages they've fallen in to a not very nefariously staged trap and are taken back - boo! The bad guy's gotten even badder in the mean time, having learned some more badassery summoning powers or something. Because he's bad. Did we mention he's really bad? And now he wants his pet Sun Summoner to come hunt the great MacGuffin with him. Well, maybe two MacGuffins. We'll see.

I did not need Alina and misery Mal going on a mighty quest for a mythological thingamebob. The first one was ridiculously easy to get (hey, big sea serpents just lie around waiting to be tracked) so didn't have much tension, and the Alina/Darkling interactions were deeply uncomfortable.

Thankfully the story isn't all about the hunt. What it is about is... Well, it's a middle book. It deals with the fallout of book one (death, destruction, testing the love interest's interest) while setting up for book three (hunting the firebird, true love conquering all, foreshadowing dire consequences).

I was so happy when Alina returned to the Little Palace, although considering how much of that death and destruction there had been there weren't really enough people around to be as interesting as the first visit. It's less school drama now, more political intrigues done on the fluffy side. I still love the strange Russian-inspired fantasy-lite world even if I can see how inaccuracies will jar too much for some.

Now characters. Alina is a bit of a flip-flop queen: weirdly capable, weirdly comedic, weirdly cold, weirdly weak & wobbly... I couldn't get a handle on her. Nor Mal, who just seemed a big grump. I wouldn't call their relationship "romance" particularly. It's just there, doing it's thing; you either believe it or you don't.

New character Prince Nikolai has got YA sass coming out of his ears; you might love him, or you might roll your eyes every time he speaks. No one is that snappy, but he's the comedic element to add to Alina/Mal's strained sarcasm. The power twins Tolya and Tamar weren't very fleshed out, being convenient extras for the most part, and the named Grisha didn't get much time to build up either. The Darkling is fairly uninteresting in his cameos too, which is a shame given how big a part he's supposed to play in Alina's life. I just didn't get their bond/relationship/whatever they've got going on.

My biggest whinge boiled down is: so many things felt less fleshed out than they could have been despite the length of the book. I wished there could have been more, but would there have been time, really? Everything that happened in this book needed to happen for the story to progress.

But (the big but) the prose is so amazingly readable that I felt myself drawn back into the Grishaverse. Bardugo has a way with words that she shares with Sarah J. Maas (though Bardugo doesn't go in for explicit content - yay!) Even when the story being told isn't at it's best, I could enjoy it for what it was. Slow paced but oddly compulsive, it still makes me want to know what happens next. ...more

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