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He had seen a woman, barefoot and unflinching in her doorway, face down a row of bayonets. He knew the look of a man defending his home with nothing but a rock in his hand.
I have to admit the prologues and epilogues of the trilogy are some of my favorite parts of the series, maybe because I love writing in the third person. Whenever I'm stuck in a story, I revert to that omniscient storyteller voice. I'll sit in my bathtub and just try to tell the story to myself. It's how I began every folk tale in The Language of Thorns.
You may be surprised to learn that, in the outline of Shadow and Bone, Mal and Alina had parents. But when I got deeper into my research, I learned about some of the noblemen who had fought the French in the Napoleonic Wars. While plenty of their rich buddies stayed safe in St. Petersburg, these aristocrats journeyed to the front and fought side by side with their serfs, spending long nights in siege with them, learning Russian from them (since many Russian noblemen only spoke French at the time). After Napoleon was forced to retreat, these officers returned home and began to institute changes: some freed their serfs, others opened schools and hospitals to serve them, and others converted their dachas into homes for war widows and orphans. This was how Duke Keramzov and the orphanage at Keramzin came to be—and our heroes' parents got the axe. Fantasy writers love to kill off parents!
Isabelle Granbohm and 2724 other people liked this
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WyldPoetry&Midnight Musings with Jaye
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Zach Chen
Thanks for being my best friend and making my life bearable. Oh, and sorry I fell in love with you for a while there. Make sure to write!
I think Alina shares my sense of humor and she uses it the same way I do—as a way of facing the darkest, most difficult times. The more I've written, the more comfortable I've gotten letting my characters be funny, though they're funny in very different ways. Nikolai loves wordplay and the absurd. Kaz's wit is as sharp and bitter as Nina's is joyful and audacious. But I confess, I may have written a note very much like this to my junior high school crush. It's hard not to look back and feel a soul-deep cringe. Anyone else made a fool of themselves over a nerd in braces? Just me?
Xitlaly and 1568 other people liked this
“I’ve been waiting for you a long time, Alina,” he said. “You and I are going to change the world.”
Well, it's hard to talk about this line without getting into spoilers. But it appears twice more in the Grishaverse—in King of Scars and in Rule of Wolves. Okay, stop reading if this is your first time reading Shadow and Bone. Stop reading. You've been warned. Turn back now. SPOILER: Baghra does warn Alina that her son has had centuries to master manipulating gullible people and he will tell them what he needs to in order to achieve his goals. Even so, sometimes the Darkling is so smart he games himself, and I think this is one of those moments. Yes, it's a line he's used before and he'll use again, but that doesn't mean he doesn't believe what he's saying is true. He's just a really thrilling character to write, always high drama but very precise. And I think I enjoy exploiting the gap between what he says and what he actually does.
Aoileann and 1329 other people liked this
“Why can a Grisha possess but one amplifier? I will answer this question instead: What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men.”
I think magic is only interesting if it has limits and so Grisha power is governed (loosely) by the rules of molecular chemistry. The Small Science really arose from the question of what happens, on a molecular level, when you wave a wand or mutter a spell. I wanted the study of Grisha power to reflect that mix of magic and science. And I didn't just want to present a history, but a kind of long running debate among scholars, as if maybe philosophers and scientists were still trying to understand Grisha gifts. There had to be mystery in "the making at the heart of the world" and that's something that I loved exploring in King of Scars and Rule of Wolves.
Resa and 943 other people liked this
It was time to let go. That day on the Shadow Fold, Mal had saved my life, and I had saved his. Maybe that was meant to be the end of us.
There's tremendous grief in these lines but also a desire to be done, to stop waiting or hoping for someone Alina believes has abandoned her. It's also meant to pair with a line that appears in Siege and Storm: "There is no end to our story." I think there are moments in our lives when we have to rewrite the narrative of a person, when someone who was only a friend becomes something more, or when someone we thought would be with us forever turns out to be someone just passing through.
Pia and 909 other people liked this
“The problem with wanting,” he whispered, his mouth trailing along my jaw until it hovered over my lips, “is that it makes us weak.”
Isn't it true though? I hate wanting things. I've always wished I could move through the world being very calm, very removed. But it's just not in my nature. It's also fun to watch a near-immortal give himself up to desire—or does he? With the Darkling you can never be sure what is real, what is calculation. I do remember when I first wrote this scene I had them entering the room, settling awkwardly on a settee. Why bother with all of that when there's a perfectly good door available?
addison g and 959 other people liked this
Put on your pretty clothes and wait for the next kiss, the next kind word. Wait for the stag. Wait for the collar. Wait to be made into a murderer and a slave.
I think I was actually writing into something deeper than I realized in this moment. I was in a very bad, very scary relationship when I wrote Shadow and Bone. I thought of myself as a smart, confident, independent person, and I was so ashamed of where I'd ended up. When I first started working on the book that would become Shadow and Bone, I didn't know what my future would look like or the way that book would change my life. All I knew was that I was stuck and scared. Writing Shadow and Bone helped remind me that I could set my mind to a task and accomplish it, that there was more to me than a frightened woman spending her days walking on eggshells. So maybe these lines were actually me standing at the crossroads, choosing whether to give in to fear and inertia—or fight my way out.
Olivia and 1147 other people liked this
“I’m sorry it took me so long to see you, Alina. But I see you now.”
I remember driving around Los Angeles, running errands, trying to figure out what I really wanted Mal to say in this moment. Unlike the Darkling, he's a teenage boy and he really has no game. But we all want to be seen truly—the whole mess of our talents and our faults—and loved because of that mess, not despite it. And at this point, both Mal and Alina have been through so much. They're different people than they were at the start of the book. The time they spend hunting the stag is an opportunity for them to get to know each other anew, to look at each other through new eyes. There's also something being telegraphed here because it's no coincidence that this is the moment the stag chooses to appear to Alina.
Lucia and 886 other people liked this
As we were led from the clearing, there was no sound but our own footfalls and the crackling of the flames behind us. No rustle came from the trees, no insect buzz or nightbird call. The woods were silent in their grief.
When I set out to write Shadow and Bone, my only goal was to finally finish the draft of a novel. I had wanted to be a writer since I was a kid and I'd started so many books. I'd get a chapter or two in and then I'd lose my way. There had been so many false starts that I didn't have a lot of faith in my ability to see a project through. But when I wrote these lines I wasn't thinking about plot mechanics or the challenges of completing a draft. I was standing in the snow with Alina, my breath white on the air, my heart aching. This was the first moment I really believed in the book and my ability to write it.
Mary Holm and 787 other people liked this
This was his soul made flesh, the truth of him laid bare in the blazing sun, shorn of mystery and shadow. This was the truth behind the handsome face and the miraculous powers, the truth that was the dead and empty space between the stars, a wasteland peopled by frightened monsters.
The Darkling is probably the most controversial character I've written. Some people feel he deserves redemption and romance. Others think he should be painted more explicitly as a villain. But I think this passage says more about Alina and her evolution than him. She's no longer susceptible to his glamor. She sees clearly, past her fear and her insecurities. She's beginning to come into her power, but her humanity and her ability to see the enemy as human are still intact.
Shreya and 788 other people liked this
They are orphans again, with no true home but each other and whatever life they can make together on the other side of the sea.
When I wrote this last line, I had no idea what the future held for this story. I'd already started taking notes for a second and a third book, but I didn't know if I'd be able to sell one novel, let alone a trilogy. If things had worked out differently, I think this could have been a proper ending. But I'm so glad it didn't have to be. I'm grateful I got the chance to meet Sturmhond, journey to Ketterdam, meet the Crows, tell the story of a young king fighting to keep his country free. So, thank you to the readers who took a chance on these books. And thank you to these orphans who started the journey with me so long ago.
Quills.Swords and 1125 other people liked this
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If you like the themes of dark magic, power, and belonging that run through the Grishaverse novels, I hope you'll join me on a different kind of adventure in Ninth House, a story of murder and occult magic set among the very real secret societies of Yale University. But be warned: this one is not for younger readers.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43263680-ninth-house
More Luna and 450 other people liked this
