SummaryYoung soldier Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) discovers she has a power that could free her country but first she must learn how to use it while avoiding those who seek to stop her in this series based on Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse novels.
SummaryYoung soldier Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) discovers she has a power that could free her country but first she must learn how to use it while avoiding those who seek to stop her in this series based on Leigh Bardugo's Grishaverse novels.
That's the real magic trick a show like this has to pull off — creating a universe that feels fresh to newcomers, without alienating them or feeling too confusing. Like so many things in life, the key ingredient turns out to be the people involved. And in the case of both the fictional characters and the cast and crew, the people of Shadow and Bone deliver.
The success of “Shadow and Bone” Season 1 is that it works so effectively as the first installment of a potential trilogy. By the end, as the show is addressing ideas of hypermilitarization, class stratification, and the fraught nature of prophecy, it’s apparent that there’s more going on inside this season than is readily available on the surface. Here’s hoping there’s a chance for even more to shine through.
Shadow and Bone is good clean fun with a vengeance (with the potential exception of a coyly-shot gay sex scene). Those who watched Game of Thrones for the nudity and cruelty may find it lacking that spicy kick, but this is fantasy with heart, a towering imagination and a genuine new take on the genre. It could be a real phenomenon for Netflix.
Mei Li and Renaux truly give their all, imbuing Alina and Mal’s relationship with the right amount of earnest pining and steaminess. But the show still falls back on YA tropes, failing to ramp up the sexiness in the right way. ... Shadow and Bone accidentally lets The Crows snatch the spotlight, making every moment they’re off the screen — and there are a lot of them — annoying. ... Shadow and Bone isn’t great. But you can’t call it boring.
Complications ensue, super powers are wielded, all as you’d expect. Actors keep straight faces despite the silliness (possibly a real superpower) and the show maintains a young adult sheen. It flows by, which is all it intends to do.
Shadow and Bone fails to deliver any of the charm and emotional engagement of a Game of Thrones (when that show was at its best), or even a Winx Saga (which is objectively terrible, but in an enjoyably ridiculous way). Again and again, Shadow and Bone forces unearned story beats and melodrama. Its character-building is lackluster; its worldbuilding is mostly incoherent, and its script careens from one-liner to one-liner without much substance in between — all while the weak writing torpedos the efforts of its talented cast.