Siege and Storm

With just a few examples of the sequel slump, I overall thought Siege and Storm tried a few new things that worked. If you liked Shadow and Bone, you'll like this and can stop reading.


SPOILERS for both books 1 and 2 below:

Cons:
Especially towards the beginning, I felt a bit of a bait-and-switch repetitiveness, almost a “Mario, your princess is in another castle!” A few examples: she runs away with Mal but the Darkling catches her; she barely escapes the Darkling during a battle in a wasteland and leaves him for dead; and there's a magical creature she needs to amp up her powers. It feels a little bit repetitive, but more importantly it cheapens the impact of the end of the last book. Kind of like the problem with Marvel movies: it's the “magical item/villain to end them all!” ... until the next movie comes along. We also go to the trouble of setting up a whole other country, but only spend a chapter or two there before going straight back to where we started. The whole first section just left me feeling like, “Wait, haven't we just been here and done this?” It's a real shame the beginning is so flat, because...


Pros:

There's a lot to like in this book once it opens up a bit. I really appreciated the introduction of the prince as a third strong character in the politics, providing some balance to the Darkling. It evens the power struggle and makes Alina's decisions more complex and interesting. We also see a lot more consequences of those decisions this time around. I did appreciate the way the last book handled her mercy towards the stag as a “more than one way to possess a life,” but I also would have really respected the ending if she just left it unfixed: you should have made the hard decision to kill the stag, and now you blew it and the world is ruined. Sometimes we have to make harsh choices for the best. Not a very YA approach, but I like when books subvert expectations. Book 2, on the other hand, did subvert those expectations. Things are going well and you have a feeling like they can mayyyyybe just pull it off, but instead it's a disaster. For the whole series, I've been looking at the monarchy through a modern lens and thinking how unstable it is to have a feeble old creep and his idiot showboy son running the country, and apparently Leigh Bardugo agrees... having a clueless party boy run your foreign policy would have real consequences in the real world, and it sure does in book 2. Similar to the original Star Wars trilogy's middle film Empire Strikes Back, I respect the author for including a large helping of reality and ending on a note of defeat.

On the whole, this series feels like it could end up in the upper end of the genre for me, alongside Mistborn or the Golden Compass. We'll see!