Completely spoiler free. (I think)
I managed to watch this surprising little series, Shadow and Bone, over the course of a weekend recently. Eight episodes, four hours one day and four the other. It’s really, really good. And kind of dark so it’s saying a lot that I think it’s so good.
It’s also based on a series of books by author Leigh Bardugo. Not sure I want to read the books though. For one thing they’re young adult. For another, from what I’ve heard, Netflix is basically combining aspects of several different storylines to create the story of the series. So reading the books might actually be more confusing than helpful.
Anyway, back to the TV series. In a lot of ways it’s your typical fantasy story of a young person, in this case the main character Alina, finding out she has extraordinary and potentially world-saving abilities. She also has a best friend in Mal and a sort of mentor in the General. Yeah, sort of mentor, that’s a spoiler free way to put it.
But it’s woven together in ways that keep it from being the ordinary coming of age story. A lot of credit for that goes not to the main characters in the coming of age story but to a group of three supporting characters working in the background. To put it bluntly, The Crows gang are phenomenal and intriguing characters that you automatically want to know more about.
Oh, and one more image that actually made me pause and back up to look at it again. Wow!
Yeah, I will definitely be watching for the next season of this one.