Siege and Storm by Leigh Bardugo

The school year is at an end, and I am in need of a desperate break from anything that requires a lot of deep thought. So I picked up the second book in the Grisha trilogy. I had actually bought book one and two at the same time. My favourite book shop has specials all the time on selected books, where it is ZAR49 for one book, or ZAR99 for three (Books usually go for something between ZAR300 to 400 each.). The second book was basically free then, which was why I picked it up. Generally, I will buy the first in a series and decide what I think before buying the next. After I had read Shadow and Storm (a.k.a book 1), I was disappointed. There were a few comments on Booktube saying that the series improved, so I decided to give the second book a chance - since I had it anyway.

As this is a sequel, I am not going to give a synopsis. If you've read the first, then you have an idea as to where this is going. If you haven't, well, personally, I would give it a skip. But, my opinion on that is not the popular one, so don't take my word on it.

My first disappointment (besides book 1), was the blurb. "The Hunger Games meets Potter, meets Twilight meets Lord of the Rings meets Game of Thrones; basically epic magical fantasy but completely for grown-ups." - Stylist Magazine. No. Just no. Nowhere friggin near! Not in someone's wildest imagination and not even with the loosest interpretations. No. No. No! (OK, maybe there were similarities with Twilight - but you really DON'T want me to go into that.) The only thing I learnt from that blurb is that I will never trust another blurb by Stylist Magazine. Apparently they don't read there.

Although the plot has a lot of potential, I think the story would have benefitted more by NOT being written in the first person. What could have been a thrilling fantasy series, ended up reading like a whining account about the protagonists feelings. There was far too much detail about love interests, her insecurities and well, other stuff that I seem to have forgotten because it wasn't necessary to the plot; and very little about anything else. In fact, I want to say that this should not have been a trilogy, but one book.

I found most of the characters flat. The book tells the reader that Alina has changed, but I couldn't see it. I also found Mal to be incredibly weak. Sure, I could understand that he was upset, but let's all be honest here, there are far more productive ways on dealing with life's knocks than fight club and a bottle. Oops. Was that a spoiler? Sorry. I tried to keep it vague.

There has to be something I enjoyed though, and there was. I liked Nikolai. He had witty responses and a good sense of humour. Having said that though, it takes more than a quirky character to make me like a book.

I don't know if I will be continuing the series. While I am a bit curious to know what happens at the end, I would be quite happy to have someone just give a quick summary in the comments below. I really do not want to buy the third book.

I gave this 2 stars on Goodreads.

This is the 78th book I have read for the 2015 TBR Pile Reading challenge.