Critique: Shadow and Bone (TV Series)

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Grisha are individuals with set powers, such as over fire or air.

General Kirigin, a shadow summoner, says grisha use science not magic because they manipulate what’s already there, not conjure it from nothing. Grisha can’t use their powers unless they touch their hands together.

The Black Heretic, an ancient shadow summoning grisha, created the Fold, a mass shadowy expanse that cuts the country of Ravka in half. In it are volcra, murderous creatures. The fabled sun summoner is hoped for to destroy the Fold.

The Bonemaker was an ancient grisha who created animals that are amplifiers. In this series we see the Stag which has the most magnificent antlers I’ve ever seen. Sometimes, animated stags have antlers too large for them to reasonably carry yet this show didn’t suffer with this ailment.

 

Alina, the main character, works as a cartographer for the Ravkan army and her best friend Mal works as a tracker. Their friendship is rather beautiful.

The chef tells Alina to go to the back of the queue because she is half-Shu. Mal steals grapes from the grisha Zoya to feed Alina. (He declines Zoya’s offer of sex even though he was clearly interested.) But then when Mal gives Alina the grapes, the pair lean in for a kiss. NO! Thankfully they break it off.

Mal gets sent through the Fold so Alina burns the maps so that a cartographer (her) has to be sent through. Mal says he’ll shoot Alina in the foot to which she replies, “I like my feet, thank you.”

Alina is taken away to the Little Palace (the grisha’s home). When Alina and Mal go to bed, there is a cut screen with one on each side. They turn their heads inwards and reach in, like are looking at each other and are holding hands.

Alina cut herself during the grisha test when she was young so that she and Mal wouldn’t be separated. But Alina eventually agrees for the Tailor to heal this wound. So Alina gives up on Mal as soon as he finds the Stag, the job he did specifically to see Alina. That was painful to watch.

We see Alina and Mal writing letters to each other and we also see that neither gets the other’s messages. Mat and Alina yell at each other for not writing back to them. Yet somehow they struggle to believe it happened to the other one, too. After how they discovered they’d been used, surely it would be easy to believe each other?

 

The show had many small moments that were spot on. Some were only small details, like how each title screen had its own unique animation. Also, the costume designers put a lot of effort into making everyone’s bums look good.

The suspense for the monsters in the Fold, the volcra, is timed so well. Their faces were really interesting: scrunched up and the ears are closer to the top of the head rather than the sides. Volcra have small melon on head like a beluga.

Bagra piles a tower of books for Alina homework then tells Alina she’s not sleeping enough. I wonder why!

Kirigan asks Mal what Alina’s favourite flower is, to prove he knows Alina. But Kirigan just wanted to impress her.

At the end, Zoya tells Alina, “I still don’t like you.” That was funny. But then Zoya adds on the profound, “Saints become martyrs before they become heroes.”

 

There were more detailed occasions that are noteworthy.

The Tailor (alters people’s appearances) asks Alina, “Have you ever bathed?” In the rest of the show she’s such a nice character so this comment as her introduction was misleading. Unless we consider that she turns out to be working for Kirigan. She provides many moments to smile at, such as, “Saving the Queen from her sagging tits doesn’t make me as important as you.”

After Alina and Kirigan kiss, Bagra pops out the wall to take Alina away, saving her from Kirigan who is the Black Heretic (who made the Fold). Alina readily believes this yet doesn’t follow the pathway Bagra set out for her. This seems odd. But let’s put it another way. So you trust her enough to believe her story but not enough to keep you safe? That makes a lot more sense.

When the Stag’s antlers sink into Alina’s collarbones, they do so unevenly. This was a great creative, artistic decision. Kirigan has a bit of stag antler in his hand, allowing him to control the stag antler in Alina.

 

It’s refreshing to see a young character (Kaz) using a walking stick. It’s also refreshing to see he’s successful, owning a club and having employees like Jesper and Inej. He doesn’t always use it within his club: this isn’t a consistency error because many stick walkers go without their aid in their home environment.

Jesper us such a show off and is just plain fantastic. His lines are the best. “I’d miss me too. I’m fantastic.” When Inej tells him he looks fine, Jesper replies, “I look more than fine.” After he shoots someone, he admonishes himself because he “still couldn’t shoot the pretty face.” I felt sorry for him at one point: Jesper keeps on ordering drinks but someone else drinks each one.

Jesper says, “What I don’t understand” and Inej cuts in, “We’ll be here all night.” Inej is such a tense character that it’s nice to see her have a bit of fun.

Inej asks Kaz what he believes in and he says, “Me. You. jesper. No saint has watched over me like you have.”

Inej has all these blades but she baulks at the idea of murder. It makes you wonder why she bothers to carry them around at all. So when she uses one to save Kaz, it makes the moment all the more poignant.

The Conductor takes Kaz and co across the Fold and one of the required items is a goat. Not as bait as everyone imagines but to calm down Jesper. That got me giggling. When Jesper has to leave the goat Milo behind, he says, “Here’s a bullet to remember me. Let’s promise never to forget each other." Then it bleats so pitifully as taken away. (Later on, Mal uses the bullet around Milo’s neck to free himself. That was such a nice detail.)

 

Nina is a heartrender grisha. They can control the speed of people’s hearts, meaning they can warm people, make them faint and even die.

She can fight really well, even with her hands and arms bound. Still, she’s captured by druskelle (Fjerdians whose job it is to catch grisha.) One of them is Mat who feeds her, none of the other grisha. Was there a reason for this choice or was it pure luck?

            At first Nina speaks with an Irish accent (labelled as from ‘the Wandering Isle’). Then she loses it which at first confused me (between that, her wet her and her bedraggled state in a dark ship, I didn’t realise she was the same character). But then we find out she speaks six languages and a spy so different accents would be a piece of cake.

            As they got wet in the shipwreck, Nina takes her clothes off to not get cold. Mat takes some convincing to get dressed, such as Nina promising him “not to ravage you.” They sleep together (for warmth). When they wake up and Mat wishes for his own bed, Nina says, “I can feel how much you hate sleeping next to me.” Perfection!

            Their friendship builds and Mat tells Nina, “I’ll always keep you warm.” So touching!

            A heartrender makes Mat faint them tells Nina that Mat will be executed. To save Mat’s life, Nina claims he’s a slaver so the nearby bounty hunter comes along. He tells the heartrender that to get in his way would be to start a war with his country Kerch. Firstly, you’re in Ravka, so Ravkan law applies (i.e. druskelle are executed). Secondly, it would only start a war if you were an important personage and, as a bounty hunter, I doubt this is the case.

Because of this, Mat thinks Nina’s affection was ‘just a cruel joke all along’ and he doesn’t trust or believe her. Why? After everything you’ve been through together?

She’s introduced in later episodes (although spoken about beforehand) and her perspective doesn’t interact with the main storyline much. However, her ending and that of Kaz and co. match up. Kaz says he needs a heartrender and Nina overhears: will she join them on their quest if they help her free Mat?

 

There were a few oddities. They weren’t wrong or even problematic but they were still… bizarre.

Alina seems surprised every time she speaks. It’s really rather peculiar.

Ravka is the only country that seems to have grisha/magic users. Is this a true impression or will we see magic users from other countries in further books?

Everyone always goes on about the Saints but none (bar Alina) is named.

Mal’s two friends die whilst on a tracking mission. These friends were only very minor characters so I didn’t connect with them. Hence their deaths weren’t too bad and had no shock value.

The bounty hunter from Kerch has a Scottish accent. So does a grisha. Does this mean this grisha is from Kerch?

Grisha need to touch hands before use ‘small science’, i.e. their powers. We see this when Alina expands the light tunnel in the Fold. Yet she expands a light shield without touching her hands. Was this an oversight? Was Alina summoning sun from nothing, hence using what Kirigan calls magic and thus doesn’t require touching hands? Could this be a further bit of world building yet to be explained?

 

Whilst there are many good aspects of this show, there was a lot that just didn’t sit right.

Alina calls the Queen “Your Highness.” No! It would be ‘Your Majesty’ because ‘Your Highness’ is for a lesser prince or princess.

"Lynx are pack hunters." Um, no. Like most felines, they are solitary creatures.

When Alina and Mal flee, they decide they can’t use a fire at night because smoke will reveal where they are. But you need light to see the smoke, and to be seen in general, so Alina’s sun powers aren’t the solution. Also they have a fire during the day, when it is really light, so the smoke will be far easier for their pursuers to see than in the darkness of night.

Alina says using her powers changes her, especially her appetite. This then leads her to figure out how Kirigan has lived so long. Never mind that’s a massive line of reasoning: what is the answer?

The Conductor made such a fuss about people not shifting their weight in the train yet nothing happens when Jesper walks to the centre of the carriage. Also wouldn’t volca attacking thee carriage shift the weight?

Inej wonders if Kaz’s plan all along was for the General to capture Alina again so they could find her easily. Um, you only just lost Alina. Not enough time to have planned anything, let along ‘all along’.

Ravkans use skifs to cross the Fold. But everyone stands on the decks, out in the open where they are vulnerable to volcra. Why? This seems so barmy.

Alina figures out the Tailor was a spy for Kirigan and that she didn’t send Alina’s letters to Mal. But Alina then figures out that the Tailor was the one that poisoned the king. I don’t see how Alina could have figured that out. It seems rather too speculative.

Kirigan doesn’t want to destroy the Fold but instead expand it. Why does he need Alina’s powers to expand it? Considering Kirigan made it in the first place, he should be able to make more of it or move it by himself.

Kirigan demonstrates him expanding the Fold to the foreign ambassadors, using this to threaten their countries. When they get angry, the Heartrender kills them. Even though Kirigan will need to give the speech again. Why not just make the dignitaries faint, like Heartrenders usually do? That would have pacified them plenty.

Alina cuts off the antler piece in Kirigan’s hand, thus ceasing his control over her and her powers. That’s fine. But she did it after having a vision of the Stag which does nothing to indicate the knife, yet the story made it clear that this vision inspired her to grab the knife and do the act.

 

 

All in all, this was an enjoyable programme. First time watching it, I was too captivated to make notes. When I watched it a second time (to give me the material to rave about a programme I loved), the repetition didn’t bore me. That’s a great indicator of the quality and enjoyment of a series.