Shadow and Bone

[olivermoss]

I liked it. It has some tropes I am not big on, but it's better written than a lot of stuff to come out of the fantasy YA genre. The story actually had world building that justifies having certain things going on.

You know how a lot of fantasy shows have a map in the opening credits? This should have been one of those shows. I feel like it was a bit rushed at times and some of the world building got condensed. Having a 'camera go zoomy over map' style opening credits would have helped a lot.

I am not sure if I'll check out the books, but yeah, I really liked it.

Comments

[lynnenne]

I’ve watched the first two episodes and I’m really enjoying it as well.

[mistressofmuses]

I haven't read the main books, but I did read the Six of Crows duology (and apparently the show pulls a few of those characters in, despite their story being separate from the rest in the books), and I definitely recommend those two!

I think their story is a little more contained (though the bigger world conflicts are still going on in the background), but I really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for heists and grey morality and found family dynamics and assholes with backup plans for their backup plans, so it was very much catnip to me, lol.

[olivermoss]

Yeah, that sounds good. I am a very hard sell on anything YA these days after The Raven Cycle. YA has a lot of things I like, but I hate it 99 times out of 100. Now that it's being used more and more for shows I keep having this 'Yes! ... oh wait' reaction.

The Crows being pulled in from another storyline explains a lot about how that plot played out.

[mistressofmuses]

I very much enjoyed the duology, and if you give it a try, I hope you like it! The first one is set around a heist, and I very genuinely enjoyed the characters. They all have interesting histories (though many are fleshed out more in the second book), and I love grey-morality mastermind types.

I have not ever read The Raven Cycle, though I remember for a while I saw it mentioned a lot.

It seems like there was a lot of frustrating homogeneity in YA as a whole, which led to a lot of the trope hell that YA became as the genre as it exploded.

I've heard several people say they really enjoyed The Crows as characters in the show (though I think only three of the six-to-seven of them are in the show, which makes sense for the timeline), and I can't speak to how the characterization compares to the books, or how they integrated them into the show's plot, but they're the part that makes me most interested in the show tbh, haha.

[olivermoss]

For a while I kept seeing a lot of people say that The Raven Cycle is great, but people were missing out because they look down on YA. It did start out really good, but then fell apart in ways that undermined every good about the start. I forget the specifics, but I was in the camp of people who were angry they'd gotten into the series.

At least YA is recognized as a genre rather than lumped into fantasy. It would be really hard to find anything else if YA wasn't contained under the YA label.

The Crows characters were cool ... and I've leave it there to not put in spoilers.

[mistressofmuses]

Yeah, that was sort of the vague impression I had from the mentions of The Raven Cycle I remember. It seemed to tip from "this series is so good, you should read it" to "...I feel betrayed, no one should read these books."

Agreed! I have complicated feelings about YA, because there IS some good stuff that likely gets unfairly passed over due to that label, and I don't like that the worst problems of a genre are used to malign the entire thing, and sometimes genre labeling is a fluid thing anyway, etc... But... I'm also really glad that it's its own thing, and doesn't devour the rest of the fantasy genre by sheer volume, haha.

Groovy. I'm sure I'll have Thoughts if/when I end up watching.

[olivermoss]

There likely is some stuff in the YA space I'd enjoy, but I only hear about the stuff that attracts and evangelistic fanbase and, well, I am completely pants at finding novels I actually enjoy these days.

... Someone recced A Companion to Wolves to me and now I have trust issues with reccs in general. But also in general so many books I try wind up being misses that I've become resistant to starting any due to the time commitment. I've tried enough things and wound up feeling betrayed like with Raven Cycle or Wolves, or the author starts putting in diversity without thinking it through (KJ Charles) ... and just rereading LOTR again just keeps seeming more and more appealing.

[mistressofmuses]

Understandable!

While this was nearly 15 years ago now, I had someone tell me that if there was ever a book that was written specifically for me, Twilight was it, because it was just so good, and I like supernatural stuff... I'm still obscurely offended about it, lmao.
(And I'm not even super on the Twilight hate-train, but I very much did Not Like It.)

(I've seen KJ Charles recced, but I haven't ever read any.)

Sometimes, just rereading an old favorite, something you know you love and are going to enjoy the experience of, is just the better option.

[olivermoss]

Someone saying a book is perfect for someone, it feels like that often turns out awkward. I'd also feel pretty weird about that.

KJ Charles' Magpie Series are still the best things I've read ...ever. The character dynamics were more nuanced and thought through that I can remember reading.

But then her later stuff gets odd. She adds trans people into her sort-of-au-Victorian-London by having a protag notice something about a person's body and feeling disgusted. I would bet a large sum of money that she was trying to show that he's wrong and he'd learn better later or something ... but when you are 66% of the way through a trilogy and suddenly the protag is having a disgust response to that it's pretty gross. It's one thing if it's a failing that's established early on, or if it's another genre, but when you are well into a single-POV romance series it's just not something to throw at a reader. People like romance to be within their comfort zone. I'd have less of a problem if it was a different genre. She also wrote a book with a Non-Binary love interest and a lot of people had problems with that ... I tried to ignore the problems or assume she'd written herself into a corner but yeah no she's done some weird stuff around trans people. I think she's well intentioned but clueless and doesn't realize how messed up some of the stuff she's writing it.

[mistressofmuses]

Right? I know I've certainly given people recommendations along the lines of "this seems like your vibe" and such, but... "this book is your soulmate" is pushing it, lmao.

I'll add the Magpie series to my tbr list. ;) Well done, interesting character dynamics are my shit.

But oof, that sounds... real awkward and gross. I'm inclined to agree that these may be attempts at inclusivity, but it sounds like it's not been done well. I'd love a romance with a non-binary love interest... if it was done well.
But having your POV protag suddenly reacting with some kind of bigotry sounds EXTREMELY uncomfortable to read. I don't need protags to exactly match my worldview by any stretch, but it's also absolutely true that in general, especially for a genre like romance, you want them in your comfort zone. OR, yeah, maybe if it's an early negative character trait that the protag is going to be forced to confront and overcome, that could work. But I'd be really uncomfortable with a protag suddenly revealing deep-seated bigotry of any kind, whether transphobia or racism or anything else.
I hope she improves and figures out how NOT to incorporate a bunch of iffy shit like that.

[kay_brooke]

I love anything fantasy, but the YA part gives me pause. I guess it can't hurt to check out an episode.