"Shadow and Bone" Lights Up Netflix
The new fantasy television series has captivated viewers with a world beyond dreams.
By Jocelyn Cosgrove
The new fantasy television series has captivated viewers with a world beyond dreams.
By Jocelyn Cosgrove
Readers of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse series and Six of Crows duology are rejoicing as Netflix releases the first season of “Shadow and Bone.” The show pulls from both the “Six of Crows” and the “Shadow and Bone” books to create a wonderful cinematic phantasma that is the Grishaverse. The high anticipation for the book to show adaptation finally ended when the series premiered on April 23 on Netflix.
“Shadow and Bone,” is about Alina Starkov, played by Jessie Mei Li, who is a mapmaker in the First Army of Ravka and finds out she is Grisha. The Grisha are people with powers allowing them to manipulate certain elements or things. With her power to destroy the highly dangerous Shadow Fold, Alina is taken to the Little Palace so that she will be able to unlock and train her power so that she can one day vanquish the Fold that plagued Ravka. The show also incorporates elements from“Six of Crows” in a different context. From “Six of Crows,” three convicts from Ketterdam by the names of Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, and Jesper Fahey are given a job that pays a lot of money to capture the newly announced Sun Summoner for reasons the buyer didn’t give. Something this show did well was keeping to the storylines seen in the books, with a few modifications to the “Six of Crows” story so that Alina and the Crow convicts' stories intertwined. The best part of those intertwined stories was seeing the different dynamics of these characters being brought together. We only were able to read bits and pieces of Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar’s backstory in the books, but with the show, we can see how their story plays out before Nina joins the Crows.
The fashion of the Grisha was spot-on, with the different colored keftas and patterns. The cast did a wonderful job portraying every character's personality right on cue. Freddy Carter as Kaz Brekker, Amita Suman as Inej, and Kit Young as Jesper, were spitting images of the characters they played. But no one can surpass the perfection of Milo the Goat, who carried this series from the beginning with his goat charm and the relationship with Jesper.
As a reader, it was exciting to see a well-known series get made into a wonderful and chaotic show with a fictional world I already know and love made to be a bit more tangible. With the season finished, nothing bad can be said about “Shadow and Bone.” Despite the differences from the books, they were all improvements that made the show so much better. However good the show ends up being, it will no doubt be better than the worlds created by the “Shadow and Bone” and “Six of Crows” books.
For people who need a good book series and a new show, “Shadow and Bone” is one that I would recommend any day.
All eight episodes of “Shadow and Bone” are currently streaming on Netflix.
“Shadow and Bone,” is about Alina Starkov, played by Jessie Mei Li, who is a mapmaker in the First Army of Ravka and finds out she is Grisha. The Grisha are people with powers allowing them to manipulate certain elements or things. With her power to destroy the highly dangerous Shadow Fold, Alina is taken to the Little Palace so that she will be able to unlock and train her power so that she can one day vanquish the Fold that plagued Ravka. The show also incorporates elements from“Six of Crows” in a different context. From “Six of Crows,” three convicts from Ketterdam by the names of Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa, and Jesper Fahey are given a job that pays a lot of money to capture the newly announced Sun Summoner for reasons the buyer didn’t give. Something this show did well was keeping to the storylines seen in the books, with a few modifications to the “Six of Crows” story so that Alina and the Crow convicts' stories intertwined. The best part of those intertwined stories was seeing the different dynamics of these characters being brought together. We only were able to read bits and pieces of Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar’s backstory in the books, but with the show, we can see how their story plays out before Nina joins the Crows.
The fashion of the Grisha was spot-on, with the different colored keftas and patterns. The cast did a wonderful job portraying every character's personality right on cue. Freddy Carter as Kaz Brekker, Amita Suman as Inej, and Kit Young as Jesper, were spitting images of the characters they played. But no one can surpass the perfection of Milo the Goat, who carried this series from the beginning with his goat charm and the relationship with Jesper.
As a reader, it was exciting to see a well-known series get made into a wonderful and chaotic show with a fictional world I already know and love made to be a bit more tangible. With the season finished, nothing bad can be said about “Shadow and Bone.” Despite the differences from the books, they were all improvements that made the show so much better. However good the show ends up being, it will no doubt be better than the worlds created by the “Shadow and Bone” and “Six of Crows” books.
For people who need a good book series and a new show, “Shadow and Bone” is one that I would recommend any day.
All eight episodes of “Shadow and Bone” are currently streaming on Netflix.