Siege and Storm

!!!Spoiler Warning!!! If you haven’t read this book yet, I give away some key spoilers!

Siege and Storm

by Leigh Bardugo

“Anything worth doing always starts as a bad idea.” 

So you know when you’ve read a book and then you go on to the sequel and you’ve sort of had your fill already and you don’t know if it’s going to be good enough to hold your interest but you just start reading anyway?
Well, this book blew me away.
It’s actually better than the first one!
I mean, how is that possible? The first one was good, but this one is great! This series just keeps on getting better!

“The world is changing,” said Nikolai, the steel edge emerging in his voice. “We change with it, or there will be nothing left to remember us but the dust.” 

Okay, so in addition to Alina, Mal and the Darkling, the cast is also joined by a few others, the most important of which is Prince Nikolai. He is just the perfect amounts of charming and suave. I though I was already in love with the Darkling, but now I just don’t know, I kinda love Nikolai, too! I’m fickle like that. A witty bit of dialogue and I’m all yours.

“I’m notoriously immune to tales of woe. So unless your story involves a talking dog, I don’t want to hear it.” 

Now, there’s a lot of the book in which the Darkling doesn’t make an appearance at all, after all we’re trying to keep him away, so that’s probably a good thing. I missed him, though. However, in all the bits the Darkling isn’t, Nikolai is. So that sort of makes up for it. (Poor Mal, I never seem to be able to find enough love for him…)
There are brief interludes where we see the Darkling appearto Alina and, honestly, those are the bits I’m turning the pages for.

“I’ve seen what you truly are,” said the Darkling, “and I’ve never turned away. I never will.” 

But, drooling over boys aside, the story is still fantastic. This is an epic scale battle of good versus evil, dark versus light. There are some Game of Thrones level battles going on in this book now, the stakes have been raised to the highest level. There are still some extremely dark bits in the story (pun fully intended) and, if it’s possible, I think I’m starting to believe Alina might be my favorite heroine since Katniss. Am I allowed to say that? Oh well, it’s out now.

Maybe the nichevo’ya bite had infected me with something. 

Can’t wait to start the final book!
Sankta Alina!

Villain Rating

The Darkling is my main villain for this book. He’s just too perfect. He’s ruthless, but clever with it. Then there’s this pull to darkness that he has. He just embodies all the bad guy things that I really, really want in my life. I’d let him put a collar on me any day! There are little snippets where he keeps appearing to Alina, but only she can see him. Like a super hot and dangerous invisible friend. He has some extremely steamy moments with Alina and how that girl pushes him away is beyond me. This guy is the perfect villain. My only grievance with this book is that he’s not in it long enough, I’m going to have to mark him down for that. 8/10

 

Happy Reading,

Claire