Review-Shadow and Bone

Leigh is a twitter buddy of mine, and when I saw she was coming to town with the Fierce Reads authors I had to get a copy of her book and read it.  The world building was so lavish and Alina was such a great character.  She wasn't beautiful, and even when she didn't have all of the fancy things she didn't whine and complain about it.  The other thing I loved about Alina was the hard decisions she had to make.  So many times YA heroins want to save everybody, and yes, Alina was like that, but she did what she had to do, and I admire that in a character.  There were so many levels to this story it was great.  With monsters and magic and some people-eating things I had just so much fun reading it.  The story is rich, and although there were some words that were a little hard to pronounce (I'm pretty sure I ended up brushing over them when I came to them in the text) but it was truly amazing.  It really was unlike anything I have read up to this point in time, and I'm not sure exactly what it was about the book, maybe the idea, maybe the characters, maybe the plot and setting, it was just all original and all so deep.  All of the twists and turns in the book were great too, I saw most of them coming but there were one or two that surprised me, and that really pleased me.  The evil in the book really made me shiver at times, which is great, because sometimes with fantasy the characters can fall short, and we shy away from the evil that is really in the world, but Leigh nailed it.  As a whole novel I was really pleased with it, there were a few points where I was a little upset with the lag in the storyline, but it was quickly remedied with another exciting part.  The next installment in the series really can't come soon enough, because I enjoyed this one immensely and with the way it ended I really want to see where Leigh takes her story. 

Out June 5, 2012

4.5/5 dust spirits