Leigh Bardugo
1 universe3 series3 books
Universes (1)
Series (3)
King of Scars
Grishaverse
Nikolai Lantsov, King of Ravka, is trying to hold his country together after the events of Shadow and Bone while hiding something monstrous inside himself. A duology following the political aftermath of the first trilogy, with Nikolai and his general Zoya Nazyalensky navigating a kingdom still fractured by war, a new religious movement, and threats from within the court and without. More explicitly political than its predecessors, and more interested in what it means to lead than in the discovery of power.
Shadow and Bone
Grishaverse
Alina Starkov is a mapmaker's assistant in the Ravkan army when she discovers she is a Sun Summoner: a Grisha with the rarest power in the world, one that could destroy the Fold and reunite the kingdom. Brought to the Little Palace to train under the Darkling, the most powerful Grisha alive, she begins to understand that power this rare attracts attention of a particularly dangerous kind. A trilogy about the cost of being extraordinary in a world that wants to use extraordinary people, and about whether the promise of salvation is ever worth the price attached to it.
Six of Crows
Grishaverse
Ketterdam is a city built on trade and crime, where the Merchant Council looks the other way and the gangs run everything below the surface. Kaz Brekker, the most feared teenager in the city's most powerful gang, is offered a job that should be impossible: break into the most secure prison in the world and extract a hostage worth more than any of them can imagine. He assembles a crew of specialists: a convict, a sharpshooter, a runaway, a spy, a Grisha. A duology that runs parallel to the events of Shadow and Bone, set in a different country with a different tone: darker, funnier, and more interested in what loyalty costs when everyone involved has reasons to betray everyone else.
Books (3)
Shadow and Bone
Shadow and Bone
2012
Alina Starkov has spent her life as an orphan in Ravka, working as a mapmaker's assistant in the First Army. When her regiment attempts to cross the Fold, a swath of impenetrable darkness filled with monsters, Alina discovers a power she never knew she had. Taken from everything she knows, she is brought to the Little Palace in Os Alta to train as a Grisha under the mysterious and magnetic Darkling. The first novel in the trilogy establishes the world, the magic system, and the central tension between Alina's growing power and the people who want to control it.
Siege and Storm
Shadow and Bone
2013
Alina and Mal are in hiding when they are found by the Darkling and his fleet. Escaping with the help of a privateer named Sturmhond, Alina begins to build something of her own: a following, a court, and a second amplifier that could make her the most powerful Grisha alive. The middle novel of the trilogy shifts the action to Os Alta's political landscape and the burden of becoming a symbol as much as a person.
Ruin and Rising
Shadow and Bone
2014
Alina is underground, diminished and dependent, when she begins to rebuild her strength and gather the pieces needed for a final confrontation with the Darkling. The concluding volume of the Shadow and Bone trilogy resolves the central conflict and the fates of its major characters, with an ending that prioritises honesty over satisfaction.