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thebigwhatif · 3 years

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Shadow and Bone: A Rant

With the new Netflix series coming out, my social media has been flooded with Shadow and Bone content. Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for the show, and I like Leigh Bardugo as an author and I thought Six of Crows was phenomenal but Shadow and Bone was disappointing for me to say the least. And here is why.

Disclaimer: If you like the book and the story and I am all for that, and I am not trying to put down anyone that likes the series. I liked the magic system in the story and the world-building was really good.

But there were concrete things that as an individual who is of Russian descent and grew up with the culture, that just SHATTERED my suspension of disbelief and took me out of the story entirely. In the end, I couldn't finish the series. So without further ado, in descending order of what bothered me the most to least:

1) The character Privet.

So for a book that takes elements from the Slavic cultures and Eastern European languages using this was jarring. Privet literally translates to 'Hi' from Russian. So reading "Hello, Privet" in book two literally translated in my mind to "Hello, hi" which is ridiculous and just broke my suspension of disbelief. I tried reading through the part, but it was so jarring that I quit the book. Not even Nikolai, who I really really liked, could save it for me.

2) The Grammar of the Ravkan Language.

I can't speak for all Slavic languages, I only know Russian so I am going to speak mostly in reference to that.

So for context Russian, like French or Spanish, is a gendered language. It's a bit different from French in that it has 3 types of pronouns: the feminine, masculine, and ungendered. And depending on the gender of your object you would change the ending of the previous word (such as an adjective) to match it.

(So for example: Sky is ungendered in Russian, so if you want to say blue sky you would use the ungendered version of the word blue. )

In Ravkan, what ended up happening was that Leigh mashed different words of different genders together so it sounds grammatically incorrect. And you might say its grammar it's no big deal, but I'll counter with: "I am become a blade"

We all make fun of Mal for getting that tattoo because to an English speaker that is intuitively incorrect so it sounds bad. I got the same level of cringe every time I read Skanta Ilya Morozova.

To break that down:

Ilya is a male name.

Sankta: ends with an A so female-gendered

Morozova: ends with an A so female-gendered.

Russian last names change ending depending on if you are a male or female. So Morozov (male) vs Morozova (female); Volkov (male) vs Volkova (female) and so on.

So having this compound of Sankta (that's setting up my mind to expect a female name) Ilya (a male name. I'm thinking okay that's kind of weird but I'll go with it) Morozova (female again? So now I'm confused did Leigh think Ilya is a female name?)

Reading that kind of stuff over and over again is like getting hit with "I am become a blade" type grammar over and over again. It's cringy, it sounds wrong, just no. I ask that Leigh would take at least 2 seconds to do the basic research on this gendering system or ask a Slavic language speaker about this. It would have been a quick fix (just add or take away the 'a' at the end) and would have shown that she took the time to research and respect the language. And it would not alienate a whole group of readers like myself.

3) Kvas.

This is another thing that just took me out of the story, and considering that this happened in the first chapter that's pretty bad. In the book, Kvas was portrayed as an alcoholic drink that the soldiers were drinking to get drunk and to 'warm up' during the winter. And just...no.

Kvas is a real drink. Also, Kvas has an alcohol content of 1.5%. Sure if it stands in the heat for a while and ferments the alcohol content can go up to 2.5% but still, you would have to drink A LOT of it to get drunk and you sure won't be "warming up" from it like you would with whisky or vodka. To put this into context you can buy Kvas at grocery stores in North America without needing an ID and kids can drink it without getting drunk (kefir has an alcohol content of 2.5% FYI).

Kvas is a very popular drink in Russia, and people drink it in the summer. It's like the Russian version of America's Iced Tea.

So now she takes a real drink that exists that she had access to and just what? Makes it something else? Especially something that is so common in the Slavic countries that's virtually ubiquitous there?

This was also an easy fix: describe Kvas as it is. If you wanted them drunk have them drink vodka. If you wanted them warm to warm up but not be drunk have them drink tea (if you didn't know tea also a popular drink in Russia). Either of those would be more realistic alternatives that wouldn't shatter the suspension of disbelief for me because now I would have to take time and think "WTF? Did she really mean that or did I misread that?"

If you've read this far down, thanks for reading my rant. Once again I want to reiterate I have nothing against anyone that likes the books or the series. I think that Leigh is an amazing writer and I'm really excited for the Shadow and Bone show (but mainly because of the Crows lol). It's just that seeing these kinds of things in the Shadow and Bone book really upset me because, to be honest, Russia is always portrayed as the 'bad guy' in popular media. They are always the villain, Russia is always portrayed grey and cold and dirty and everyone there is a drunk, and growing up in North America being from Russia watching that really sucked because I identify with that culture, I'm from that country, I know the language, and often times what they show on TV is just wrong. I was excited to see a Slavic-inspired world because I don't usually see that in fantasy or other media and it was just handled so badly. So, I was a bit disappointed when reading the books. Hopefully, the show is better on that front but we will see.

#shadown and bone #six of crows #alina starkov #mal oretsev #the darkling #leigh bardugo #rant #nikolai lantsov #unpopular opinion #review #ravka

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