Siege and Storm Review

     Alina is now the Sun Summoner, the cost of growing her powers. She and Mal have fled Ravka, trying to escape from the people hunting her. However, the Darkling is determined to take her back and use her powers for his own gain. Alina is forced to receive help from a privateer and, with his help, plans to take command of the Second Army. As more truths come out though, Alina gets sucked further into the Darkling's schemes, not out as she wishes to be. She will be forced to choose between love and power in order to save her country. She is the only one who can- and winning this war will be costly.

    Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Let's begin:

    My warning from the first book stands: in order to read this, you will have to deal with some cheesy things. However, not nearly as much as the first book, so if you read that one and enjoyed it, you should be perfectly fine with this one.

    I liked the characters even more in this book. Alina is much stronger and more confident in herself now which I absolutely love. It was great watching her grow more. The Darkling is such a great complex character. He definitely fascinates me and I enjoyed learning more about him and seeing a few sides of him. In my review for the first book, I said that I liked Mal, but didn't really love him. This changed a bit in this book. I still don't love him, but we're getting close. Also, I had a hard time backing Alina and Mal's relationship because I felt like they were better as best friends. This too changed a little by the end of the book because of some of Mal's actions. He was super sweet with her. 

    I greatly enjoyed our new characters. The twins are complete badasses and even though there was a twist with them at the end, I still love them. My favorite new character has to be the charming privateer (I will refer to him as that to avoid spoilers). His swagger certainly won me over and, if he didn't have that, his depth would have gotten me anyway. In fact, he may be my favorite character overall.

    The world building stayed strong in this book. I once again could see a movie playing in my head as I was reading and understand all of the powers. The main new place in the book, The True Sea, was very cool and all of the scenes that took place there were easily conjured in my head.

    I gave the first book four stars because I found it slightly boring in the first half. The author earned five stars for this book because she greatly improved the plot. I was not bored. I was interested in what was happening the entire time, especially towards the end (I think that is one of this author's strongest skills- the endings). Additionally, all of the battle scenes wee epic. I probably had a crazed look on my face during all of those because of how well written they were and how badly I wanted to know what was going to happen.

    As always, I appreciate the map that is included in the beginning. I like this map even more than normal though because it has some cool features like drawings of some of the creatures readers see in the book. I also REALLY liked that the author included a page to lay out the three orders in the Grisha, their names, and the different powers within each order. This was very helpful in keeping track of who can do what while reading. It was a very good reference page. The book cover is also absolutely gorgeous once more and I love it even more because it is meaningful.

    I was pleased to find another interview with the author at the end of the book. If you could not tell from my first review, I really love getting a peak in the author's head. Another thing I was super happy about at the end was seeing a short story, The Tailor. I enjoyed this little read. I liked getting to understand Genya and the reasons behind her actions more. Genya is a fantastic morally grey character which is part of what I think makes her so relatable and makes me unable to truly dislike her. Her point of view was fascinating and written brilliantly.

    Overall, I would recommend reading this book. If you read the first and didn't really care for it, I suggest picking this one up and seeing if your opinion on the series changes. My opinion definitely improved. I cannot wait to start Ruin and Rising now!

Rating: 5/5 stars

Author: Leigh Bardugo

Publisher: Square Fish

# of Pages: 432

Genre: YA, Fantasy

Series: Shadow and Bone Trilogy (Book 2)