2013 book 161

Leigh Bardugo's Siege and Storm
I really liked Shadow and Bone, but this second book in the Grisha trilogy didn't really do it for me. For one thing, the main character keeps a secret that drives a wedge between her and her closest friend/love interest--one of my pet peeves in storytelling--and there's no real reason to keep this secret! For another, she's just as pessimistic as in the first one, and it starts to get grating after a while. And for another, most of the book is taken up with battle plans, which is not one of my areas of interest, and annoying romantic angst. There are some cool new characters--particularly a pirate and two of his crew--but they aren't enough to make things fun. And things here aren't fun. I mean, it is a book about a battle between light and dark (literally) in some fantasy version of Russia, so maybe fun isn't necessarily on the agenda, but still. The end was pretty interesting and I'll still probably read the third one, but I was really not excited about this second volume. B.