Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo
Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.
Alina Starkov has never been anything but ordinary. Orphan, soldier, mapmaker—she’s always been able to blend in, and is perfectly okay with that. In the ranks of the Ravkan First Army, where part of the job is crossing the Shadow Fold, a dangerous—and potentially fatal—swath of land shrouded in darkness, being invisible can play to your advantage.
But everything changes on her first crossing. When their skiff is attacked by monsters who threaten Alina’s dearest and oldest friend, Mal, something inexplicable happens. Before she knows it, Alina is swept up into the ranks of the Ravkan Second Army. Made up of the Grisha, people born with science-based magic abilities, they inform Alina that she, too, is one of them—one like no other: a Sun Summoner, and the only Grisha capable of destroying the Shadow Fold.
But all is not as it seems, and once-invisible Alina Starkov is now the target of awe, suspicion, violence… and betrayal.
Shadow and Bone is the exciting start to an incredibly detailed world by Leigh Bardugo: the Grishaverse. As Alina races to figure out what is right, what is wrong, and how to save the world from the horrors of the Shadow Fold, before you know it, you’re wrapped up in it too.
