Review of “Siege and Storm” by Leigh Bardugo

Review of “Siege and Storm” by Leigh Bardugo

I wasn’t impressed with the first book Shadow and Bone, so I didn’t have high hopes about the second book. Luckily, Siege and Storm starts off strong and ends strong. The middle parts have its ups and downs, but overall this book, for me, is an improvement over the first book. The novel opens up with Alina and Mal captured by the Darkling, and their sailing on a ship in order to seek out a sea serpent for the next amplifier. We get a new character Sturmhond the leader of the mercenary ship, who we later find out is Prince Nikolai Lantsov. I like Nikolai as a character, because he has some fun dialogue and is the only that has an interesting personality. Unfortunately, Genya is leaves the book early on, and even though she is a supporter of the darkling, I still enjoy her character and relationship with Alina.

After Alina gets the second amplifier from the serpent, that Mal helps track, Sturmhond betrays the Darkling and Alina and Mal get taken away to the palace. The darkling only shows up as mind illusions to mess with Alina. Back at the palace Alina becomes general of the second army, which is an army of Grisha. We meet some other new characters, brother and sister Tolya and Tamar who are a bit mysterious but loyal in protecting Alina. In addition to new characters, we spend more time with some minor returning characters, like Zoya and David. Zoya is a squaller which his basically an air bender and David is a magical fabricator that created the Stagg collar amplifier that Alina wears. I do like what we get with the Grisha in this book, Alina breaks down barriers between the different kind of Grisha users.

While I do like the new characters and the other Grisha, I will say one of the problems I still have is with the main characters, Alina, Mal and the Darkling. The Darkling is a cliché villain, who doesn’t get to do much for the entire middle of the book. His motives are too generic and there is still some weird, lingering sexual tension between him and Alina. Speaking of sexual tension, I am tired of this will they won’t they between Alina and Mal. They’re melodramatic relationship where she won’t tell him how she feels about him has become tiresome.

Overall, I think this book is more intriguing and engaging than the last book, but I still find this series to be a bit dull. We spend too much time hearing Alina’s monologues in her head, and not enough time actually doing things. The pacing of this book was better than the first, but the middle section does slow down a bit. I will read the third book, just because I am curious to see how this all ends, but I don’t have high hopes that I will like it. Hopefully, I would love to be surprised.