‘Shadow and Bone’ Series Review: Netflix’s Latest Fantasy Series is Irresistibly Bingeable

"Shadow and Bone" is Netflix's one of the most anticipated recent releases, it’s an adaptation of the Grishaverse, a bestselling young adult fantasy series of novels by Vivien Leigh Bardugo primarily based on Tsarist Russia. However inevitably, what most viewers are reminded about as they watch the eight-episode debut season is Game of Thrones.

If you are searching for another fantasy series to spend a minimum of eight hours with, then Netflix's Shadow and Bone can hit the spot. With plenty of action, magic, and teenage anxiety, this is a peak young adult viewing to a fault.

A stretch of monster-infested terrain known as the Shadow Fold threatens both magical and non-magical nations in a region called, Ravka. In the center is Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), a young soldier and orphan who simply desires to survive and be with her best friend Mal (Archie Renaux).

In the first season, “Shadow and Bone” continues to stick to the book’s original setup, but deviate sharply from it, and borrow components of Bardugo’s extended Grishaverse to make a thorny, immersive world all its own. It’s a bold approach, not because it has eight episodes to jump to the next plot of the story, makes a few whiplash transitions because it hurries to urge to subsequent massive plot purpose. In most parts of the show, though, “Shadow and Bone” don’t seize much, focusing its energy on fleshing out its characters and universe in a manner that might sustain it beyond any single book.

Alina’s story unfolds mostly because the same happens throughout Bardugo’s initial volume, however, the season’s subplots borrow from different books entirely. A trio of “Crow” rogues — gymnast spy Inej (Amita Suman), sharpshooter Jesper (Kit Young), and ringleader Kaz (Freddy Carter) — aren’t in the “Shadow and Bone” book, yet are an integral part of the series with a mission of their own. The same goes for recalcitrant Grisha Nina (Danielle Galligan) and her wary captor Matthias (Calahan Skogman), although they’re principally stranded off at the fringes of the show in its least urgent plot. By increasing “Shadow and Bone” past the parameters of Alina’s experience, the show makes her world feel a lot larger, denser, and complex. This works particularly well for the Crows, with Suman’s Inej and Young’s Jesper offer welcome depth and humor, respectively.

Still, the main star of the show is Alina, a challenge Li embraces. Whether or not depicting Alina battling with her unexpected new powers, yearning for Mal, or finding herself drawn to the mysterious General Kirigan (an entirely committed mountain Barnes), Li makes for a compelling center of gravity. Alina is sensible and constant, aggravated and rash, sorrowful and froward. The show’s most evident climaxes tend to involve Grisha throwing the element at one another, however, it is most functional entirely on Alina’s face, lined with pain, joy, and worry.

Oftentimes, a story revolving around one main character can be least fascinating, obligated as they're to being the Sun everybody else should revolve around. But that’s not the case with Li’s Alina, a heroine is as believably vulnerable as she is daring. Netflix should offer its “Shadow and Bone” enough time surpassing this installment to unravel its several tangled threads, there’s very little doubt that this version of Alina will sustain it.

In later episodes, she's taken underneath the wing of General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), a Shadow Summoner and leader of Ravka’s army for rigorous coaching and honing of her powers. However, if you're thinking that he’s doing that out of the goodness of a heart unstuffed with personal motives, then you, have no idea about the Shadow Summoner, a fantasy trilogy, or any narrative fiction and are needed to clutch to your hat.

Perhaps the cleverest move during this season is to resist the temptation to let the existence of a possible superweapon overwhelm the remainder of the series. There are points where the regular old city-destructing climax feels inevitable — the places wherever “Shadow and Bone” may pull back from a preoccupation with destruction and target the specific relationships within a changing world makes a lot more compelling story engine.

“Shadow and Bone” covers a splendid lot of territory in the eight episodes. Some might balk at how removed some of these threads are. Paradoxically, the density of this detail of obligations to the characters — without getting into the plan of Bardugo’s books, this series is effectively combining both the parallel series into one — is both a strength and a small hindrance, given how much time and space there is to work with.

Final Score – [8.5/10]
Reviewed by – Ritika Kispotta
Follow her @KispottaRitika on Twitter (https://twitter.com/KispottaRitika)