Shadow and Bone was published by Henry Holt and Company in 2012, launching the Grishaverse — a secondary fantasy world that would spawn three trilogies, two duologies, and a Netflix television series, making Bardugo one of the most commercially successful fantasy authors of her generation.
The world draws on Tsarist Russia rather than the medieval Western Europe that dominates Anglophone fantasy: Ravka is a nation divided by the Shadow Fold (a swath of impenetrable darkness populated by monsters called volcra), ruled by a king who depends on the Grisha — people who can manipulate the elements (Squallers control wind, Inferni control fire, Heartrenders control bodies). The Grisha are led by the Darkling, a figure of immense power whose charm conceals ambitions that exceed anything the court imagines.
Alina Starkov is a mapmaker in the First Army — an ordinary orphan girl with no apparent Grisha power — until a volcra attack in the Fold reveals that she is a Sun Summoner, capable of producing light that could destroy the darkness permanently. She is taken to the Little Palace, trained as Grisha, and drawn into the Darkling’s orbit — a man centuries old who has been waiting for someone with her power.
Bardugo’s innovation within YA fantasy is her willingness to make the mentor figure genuinely dangerous rather than merely misguided, and to allow her protagonist’s attraction to power (and to the powerful) to be real rather than merely naive. The Darkling is not a stock villain but a seductive argument — for certainty, for strength, for the beauty of darkness — that Alina must reject not because it’s obviously wrong but because she recognizes what it would cost.
Collecting Shadow and Bone
First edition (Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2012): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $50–$150
- Signed first edition: $100–$300
- Without jacket: $15–$30