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| Taken from Google Images |
Title- Shadow and Bone
Creators- Leigh Bardugo and Eric Heisserer
Cast- Jessie Mei Li, Archie Renuax, Freddy Carter, Amita Suman, Kit Young, Ben Barnes plus ensemble cast
Genre- YA, Fantasy
Length- 8 episodes
Platform- Netflix
Rating- 4/5 stars
Plot
Alina Starkov, a cartographer in the First Army of Ravka, discovers that she is a Grisha (a person who can perform "small science") with the ability of summoning light. When her ability is revealed to the world, tensions arise between the nations of Ravka, Shu Han, and Fjerda. With the mentorship of General Kirigan, a Grisha with the ability to control darkness, Alina becomes Ravka's only hope of destroying the Shadow Fold—a region of impenetrable darkness that has stained the land for hundreds of years and split East and West Ravka. At the same time, a crew of thieves in the trade hub of Ketterdam known as the Crows attempt to kidnap Alina and win a fortune.
Taken from Wikipeida
Opinions
I will be totally honest and say I was not that bothered about this show before it's release. I knew that the Grishaverse was being adapted and that was it. I had read the books between 2017-19 and thought they were okay. I feel I was one of the few people that wasn't blown away by Six of Crows. I had seen the trailer and thought it looked good. A friend of mine convinced me to watch it as I wasn't planning on watching it around the time it was released.
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I have now watched it twice. After a underwhelming start, this show really picked up. At first, I found the writing, the dialogue especially, to be very clunky. Now this could be because I was going through the process of rewriting my own scripts and my mind was very dialogue focused, but the first couple of episodes had some not so great dialogue in my opinion. The actors managed to salvage it. As the show went on, the writing got better and by the end, I was desperate to know what happened next. I finished watching it and found myself in a position where I didn't know what to watch next. So I decided to rewatch it, because why not.
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I knew they were planning on intertwining the storylines and I actually quite enjoyed it. I really liked the episodes were we had the three storylines of Alina's story, the Crow's story and Nina's story. Those episodes stood out to me and were the ones I couldn't stop watching. They moved between the three quite naturally, in a way that always kept you interested. It was a smart choice not to just adapt the Shadow and Bone storyline on it's own as that wouldn't have been as strong.
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Let's talk about the design/technical side of the show. I loved the music, and have listened to it several times since. The set and costume designs were great. Aside from the writing, I don't really have any complaints about the show. I thought the actors all did incredible jobs in their roles. That Netflix budget really came through and made this a solid show.
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As already mentioned, I read the books back in 2017-19 and was underwhelmed by them. I remembered enjoying the Shadow and Bone series over the Six of Crows series, which meant it was odd when I ended up preferring the Six of Crows storyline. I thought the cast had great chemistry and felt like they were the characters (from what I remembered about them). I remember loving Jesper and thought Kit Young played him very well. I'm excited to see what they do with their storyline when we get to it.
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| Taken from Google Images |
I think it would be unfair of me to not mention some of the controversies around this show. The first one was about the attitudes towards race within the show and how it wasn't needed. Some people have liked it, saying it was powerful, other people have said it was unnecessary. Then there was the inconsistent way it was handled, and how it seemed to be only Alina on the receiving end, when in the show Mal, Zoya, Inej and Jesper are all people of colour. Zoya seemed to be the one making most of the statements towards Alina, I'll link an interesting article on it so you can read it here. Recently, it was revealed that Amita Suman's stunt double was in fact a white woman who was made up to look like she was the same ethnicity as Amita. A lot of fans have called that out, with the show-runner making a formal apology. I hope these are issues that are fixed for the future.
We're all now waiting for it to be renewed for a second series. I'm kinda surprised that it's taken this long as normally it's within a month a show gets renewed, but there's still time for it to be renewed. It would be a shame if the show didn't get a second series as it was well received by fans, despite the things I mentioned above. Hopefully we'll find out soon.
What did you think of Shadow and Bone?
