Book Review: Ruin and Rising (Grishaverse #3) by Leigh Bardugo

Ruin and Rising by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Book three.

Holy hell, I’m on book three.

And book three is slowly but surely killing me.

Why, you ask, is book three killing me?

Well one, Mal and Alina are currently with the Apparat, who, for the love of god, reminds me of Wormtail from Harry Potter, but worse, much, much worse, in the White Cathedral. The Apparat has been styling Alina as Sankta Alina and pretty much controlling her from the start, even when she didn’t have her powers. So one day Mal and the others decided to trick the Apparat and she got her powers back (yay) after she was tending to Genya’s eye (which thanks to Daddy Darkling….well...you know). Once Alina put the fear of the God back into him and told him to be in his rooms, she left the White Cathedral with her friends to try and find the firebird…

All except she can now call and see the Darkling now.

Through the bond they have.

Which shouldn’t have shocked me but it did as I read it.

And she kept it from her friends, even when Nikolai found them again on a new boat and traveled to get as far away as they can from the Darkling, only to find out that he really wanted Alina back. And he would do anything to get her back, even going to Keramazin to kill everyone she ever known, like Ana Kulya, telling her:

“I will strip away all that you know, all that your love, until you have no shelter but me.”

This quote will forever be in my mind, even as I write it down in my journal because it was that good of a line for a villain to say. And then on the boat when the Darkling found them and turned Nikolai into a monster….I turned to the left because I went OH NO MONSTER BOYFRIEND OH NO and then after that we found out something big. Really big.

One, is that Baghra is Morozova’s daughter (I felt like throughout the book we were focused on him and the Darkling) and...that Mal is the third amplifier for Alina. He’s the firebird.

And Alina is swearing up and down that she will never kill him because she loves him.

Which honestly, I’m going all the way to the ending, which sucked. So, so much.

I really didn’t want Alina to end up with Mal, I really didn’t. Yes he was the firebird, yes he did so many wonderful things throughout the story (like tracking) but...Mal is boring. So, so boring. I thought she would’ve at least chosen Nikolai or the Darkling (but that’s just me, I’ll choose the Darkling and me and him would be married without me even thinking about it, and I won’t have no regrets at all) but Mal? Boring old Mal? I don’t even see them being together, much less them having anything similar in common. But I mean, it was nice and all. They opened up a little orphanage and being all cute and a couple….BUT WHY THOUGH, LEIGH BARDUGO, WHY????

I wanted something else for them, this wasn’t it!!!!

But you know what, it’s all good, because I have the duolgy (got the first book,of it, King of Scars) and I pre ordered the new one, and I have the Book of the Saints, so maybe I can do a nice book marathon when Ruin of Wolves comes out (and I can’t wait for that, honestly).

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