Shadow and Bone – Differences between the book and the Netflix-Series

“Shadow and Bone” is a very popular Netflix Series about a Russian-inspired Fantasy world, in which witches and warlocks are called Grisha. In most of the Countries, Grisha’s are actually feared, or even hunted down. But the land of Ravka treats them like royalty, raises them in wealth, and trains them to become soldiers in an age-old war. The story, which has been called the Harry Potter of the new generation, is heavenly inspired by the books of Leigh Bardugo, but after reading the first one myself, I noticed some major differences that I wanted to share with you. So if you thought about maybe reading the books because you loved the series much, as I did, this post is perfect for you 😉 But it might also be interesting to the people who only read the books too, if you want to see what got adapted and what did not. The things I will be pointing out are SPOILERS, if you are new to this series and don’t like to hear spoilers at all, I would highly recommend go watch the series now and come back after that. It has only 8 episodes and it’s very bindgeable 😉

1: Alina is not Shu, nor belongs to any other minority
This might not be something affecting the story directly, so changing it made no real difference there, but it was still something that really confused me. The first few minutes of the first episode show that as a Shu-looking woman Alina has to face racism every day, which of course is a problem we have in our world too. But in the books, Alina is only an orphan, nothing is said about her heritage, she is not criticized because of her skin color and she does not even seem to speak any of the languages outside of Ravka. Don’t get me wrong, being an orphan, having your life completely change, and having to face jealousy from other Grisha does not make her life easier, but still. Making her part of a minority group like that, without any real reasoning behind it, makes it seems as if they wanted her to be more of a victim and that does not sit right with me.

2: There are no parallel timelines, so more Mal and Alina?
If you loved the way the story was told in the series, being able to see the crows preparing the heist, Mal trying to get to Alina and Nina being abducted and growing onto her kidnapper, you will be disappointed in the books. Because the only storyline we get to experience in full detail is Alinas, we only get a small glimpse of Mal at the end when their storylines became one again in the series, after finding and defeating the stag. But until then, we don’t even know that Mal is looking for Alina and honestly, we don’t even care about him anymore. If I would not have seen the series first, I would not even have known, they were in love with each other for the first 2/3 of the book. Alina does say she is in love, but we have no information about Mal whatsoever and with him seemingly not answering her letters, we readers will tend to like the Darkling as a possible love interest way more. Which is another thing, caused by the different style of storytelling: In the series you could see the Darkling being manipulative, hiding things from Alina, you just knew something was off. But in the books, you don’t really get that feeling. I can’t really decide which way is better…

3: The Darkling is not an “older” man
A bit like changing Alina to being Shu, at least for me it felt like they changed the Darkling to be intentionally older than he was described in the books. Yes as a powerful Grisha and with all of his backstory being known at one point, he is very much older than Alina, but in the books, he does not look that way, he is actually described as being as young as Alina herself. And I think it’s important because the whole first book is about how naive Alina is, how she falls for him and his orders and how he slowly begins to own her. I think that partially is due to the way he is looking, Alina seeing someone not older than her, forgetting about his long life and being more easily manipulated by him. To be honest, that might also be why I felt as if it was obvious that he had bad intentions from the start. And again I don’t know which execution I liked more: the series being very open about Alina and Mal belonging together and the Darkling being bad or the books only hinting at Alina and Mals possible future but having the Darkling be less obviously the bad guy, making readers actually root for him.

4 +5: The crows and the Grisha hunters are not present
For many viewers including me, the crows were even more interesting than the whole Alina-being-the-savior storyline. They were just more relatable than a prophecy character who became royalty overnight, not to mention the brilliant acting and very fitting casting choices for lovable gangsters. The only problem is, they are not present in book one. They are not mentioned once, they don’t just show up at one point as Mal does and basically, their whole storyline in the series never happened in the books. After doing some research while also trying not to get spoilered myself, I came to the conclusion that the characters actually only exist in their own books called “The six of crows”. The same goes for the Kidnapping timeline, Nina and Matthias also have their story told in the Crows book series. Both seem to only have inspired the character we know from the series, their stories being altered to match the new storyline, but you can still consider the duology their original story. I actually think the series was more interesting including them in the way they did and it did not change Alinas Storyline up to this point at all, so I think it was a clever decision to make, also not having to do multiple series but putting all the cool stuff in one. The only problem is, if you were looking forward to reading about the crows or even Nina and Matthias, you will either have to wait or just read “the six of crows” right away, instead of the original Grishaverse trilogy.

All in all, I have to say, that I was a bit disappointed in the books, having had certain expectations from watching the series first, which of course is more my fault than Bardugos. But I think many people will be in the same situation, so I thought it was worth writing about. I was very sad that my favorite characters were missing, that the story was basically the same as in the series, meaning that I did not even get as many cool details out of reading the books as I would have liked and I think I do actually prefer the way viewers were introduced to Alina and Mal’s relationship in the series. In the books, because we don’t know about his efforts, we don’t really grow attached to the idea of them being together, even though their love is very clearly shown at the end. I am looking forward to reading the next books, since apart from the other timelines, we saw in the series, but not in book one, it ends more or less exactly where the Netflix series ends. So everything from book two will be new to me and maybe it will make reading a bit more interesting and who knows, maybe the crows do show up at one point and if not, I already have their own Duologie at hand 😉

Greetings and good wishes
The Mad Hattress