We continue our 12 Days of Blogmas 2021 with Day 14, using Sophie @ Beware of the Reader‘s Blogmas prompts. Hers features Best Epic Fantasy of 2021:
Blogmas Day 15: Best Epic Fantasy
At first, I was going to say Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan, but now I’ll say Shadow & Bone by Leigh Bardugo. I’ve only seen the Netflix show; I’ve only read maybe 2-3 chapters of the first book, but I couldn’t understand it, so I’d thought the show would make things clearer. And boy, did they! I was so drawn into every episode of Season 1. Between Mal and Alina’s friendship, Alina and the Darkling’s romance, Alina discovering her cool Sun Summoner powers, and everything in between. I don’t want to give a lot away, but just know that the show is criminally underrated and so good!
Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo Published by Macmillan on May 7, 2013
Genres: Young Adult, Fairy Tales & Folklore, General, Fantasy & Magic, Science Fiction, Young Adult Fiction, Fantasy, Epic
Pages: 358
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Goodreads
See the Grishaverse come to life on screen with Shadow and Bone, now a Netflix original series. Enter the Grishaverse with Book One of the Shadow and Bone Trilogy by the #1 New York Times–bestselling author of Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom. Soldier. Summoner. Saint. Orphaned and expendable, Alina Starkov is a soldier who knows she may not survive her first trek across the Shadow Fold—a swath of unnatural darkness crawling with monsters. But when her regiment is attacked, Alina unleashes dormant magic not even she knew she possessed.
Now Alina will enter a lavish world of royalty and intrigue as she trains with the Grisha, her country’s magical military elite—and falls under the spell of their notorious leader, the Darkling. He believes Alina can summon a force capable of destroying the Shadow Fold and reuniting their war-ravaged country, but only if she can master her untamed gift.
As the threat to the kingdom mounts and Alina unlocks the secrets of her past, she will make a dangerous discovery that could threaten all she loves and the very future of a nation.
Welcome to Ravka . . . a world of science and superstition where nothing is what it seems.
A New York Times Bestseller A Los Angeles Times Bestseller An Indie Next List Book This title has Common Core connections.
Read all the books in the Grishaverse!
The Shadow and Bone Trilogy (previously published as The Grisha Trilogy) Shadow and Bone Siege and Storm Ruin and Rising
The Six of Crows Duology Six of Crows Crooked Kingdom
The King of Scars DuologyKing of Scars
The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous MagicThe Severed Moon: A Year-Long Journal of Magic
Praise for the Grishaverse
“A master of fantasy.” —The Huffington Post “Utterly, extremely bewitching.” —The Guardian “The best magic universe since Harry Potter.” —Bustle “This is what fantasy is for.” —The New York Times Book Review “[A] world that feels real enough to have its own passport stamp.” —NPR “The darker it gets for the good guys, the better.” —Entertainment Weekly “Sultry, sweeping and picturesque. . . . Impossible to put down.” —USA Today “There’s a level of emotional and historical sophistication within Bardugo’s original epic fantasy that sets it apart.” —Vanity Fair “Unlike anything I’ve ever read.” —Veronica Roth, bestselling author of Divergent “Bardugo crafts a first-rate adventure, a poignant romance, and an intriguing mystery!” —Rick Riordan, bestselling author of the Percy Jackson series
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See you tomorrow for Day 16 of Blogmas!
Thanks for reading,
That one is iconic!