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WEBSITE: http://www.leighbardugo.com/
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https://yalealumnimagazine.com/blog_posts/1187
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Kirkus Reviews Aug. 1, 2022, review of Bardugo, Leigh: DEMON IN THE WOOD. p. NA.
Publishers Weekly vol. 269 no. 45 Oct. 31, 2022, , “Hell Bent.”. p. 36.
Booklist vol. 119 no. 5-6 Nov. 1, 2022, Mickelsen, Anna. , “Hell Bent.”. p. 40.
Kirkus Reviews Dec. 1, 2022, , “Bardugo, Leigh: HELL BENT.”. p. NA.
Kirkus Reviews June 1, 2017, , “Bardugo, Leigh: WONDER WOMAN.”.
Booklist vol. 113 no. 19-20 June, 2017. Hunter, Sarah. , “Wonder Woman: Warbringer.”. p. 101.
Voice of Youth Advocates vol. 40 no. 3 Aug., 2017. Fenske, Cyndi. , “Bardugo, Leigh. Wonder Woman: Warbringer: DC Icons, Book 1.”. p. 69.
Kirkus Reviews Sept. 1, 2017, , “Bardugo, Leigh: THE LANGUAGE OF THORNS.”.
Booklist vol. 114 no. 2 Sept. 15, 2017, Reagan, Maggie. , “The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic.”. p. 51.
Voice of Youth Advocates vol. 41 no. 1 Apr., 2018. Martincik, Lisa. , “Bardugo, Leigh. The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic.”. p. 68.
Publishers Weekly vol. 266 no. 4 Jan. 28, 2019, , “King of Scars.”. p. 99.
Booklist vol. 115 no. 11 Feb. 1, 2019, Reagan, Maggie. , “King of Scars.”. p. 75.
The Horn Book Magazine vol. 95 no. 4 July-Aug., 2019. Burkam, Anita L. , “King of Scars.”. p. 123.
Kirkus Reviews July 15, 2019, , “Bardugo, Leigh: NINTH HOUSE.”.
Booklist vol. 115 no. 22 Aug. 1, 2019, Mickelsen, Anna. , “Ninth House.”.
Publishers Weekly vol. 266 no. 32 Aug. 12, 2019, , “Ninth House.”. p. 43.
Kirkus Reviews Nov. 15, 2019, , “Bardugo, Leigh: WONDER WOMAN.”.
Booklist vol. 116 no. 9-10 Jan. 1, 2020, Temple, Suzanne. , “Wonder Woman: Warbringer (The Graphic Novel).”.
Kirkus Reviews Mar. 15, 2021, , “Bardugo, Leigh: RULE OF WOLVES.”.
ONLINE
Bookreporter.com, https://www.bookreporter.com (October 11, 2019), review of Ninth House
Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology—and much more. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University. For information on new releases and appearances, sign up for Leigh’s newsletter.
Leigh Bardugo
Leigh Bardugo is the New York Times-bestselling author of Ninth House and the creator of the Grishaverse, which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy (now a Netflix original series), the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology, The Language of Thorns, and The Lives of Saints–with more to come. Her short stories can be found in multiple anthologies, including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Leigh grew up in Southern California and graduated from Yale University. These days she lives and writes in Los Angeles.
Joanna Volpe
Grishaverse Author’s ‘Ninth House’ Novel To Be Developed As TV Series By Amazon Studios
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Nellie Andreeva
Co-Editor-in-Chief, TV
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October 10, 2019 8:55am
Leigh Bardugo Ninth House
Courtesy of New Life Literary & Media
EXCLUSIVE: In a competitive situation, Amazon Studios has won the rights to Grishaverse author Leigh Bardugo’s just released novel Ninth House to develop as a series, with Bardugo attached to write the adaptation and executive produce.
Ninth House, published October 8 by Flatiron Books, is Bardugo’s first novel for adults. It is set at an alternate Yale, Bardugo’s real-life alma mater, where the secret societies guard dangerous, magical secrets and ghosts haunt the campus.
A book of the month selection at Apple, Barnes & Noble and Amazon, Ninth House has an order for 350,000 copies for its first print run. It triggered a bidding war among premium and streaming outlets, with HBO and Hulu reportedly among those pursuing the title.
Bardugo will executive produce the project alongside her frequent collaborator Pouya Shahbazian (the Divergent series), head of film & TV at New Leaf.
Ninth House comes on the heels of Bardugo’s hugely successful Grishaverse fantasy novels, including Six of Crows, which spent over a year on the New York Times bestseller list, as well as Shadow and Bone, which is being adapted into a series by Netflix. The Grishaverse books have sold three million copies in English and have been translated into 41 languages.
Shahbazian also executive produces Love, Simon, the upcoming Disney+ series inspired by the Greg Berlanti-directed film, now in production.
Bardugo is currently on a nationwide tour for Ninth House, which has received endorsements from authors Stephen King, Lev Grossman, Charlaine Harris, Joe Hill and Kelly Link, and will follow with a tour in the UK. She is repped by Joanna Volpe at New Leaf Literary & Media and attorney Melissa Rogal of Lichter Grossman.
‘Shadow & Bone’ Renewed For Season 2 As Netflix Reveals Viewership Data For Fantasy Drama
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June 7, 2021 9:05am
Shadow and Bone
'Shadow & Bone'
Attila Szvacsek/Netflix
Netflix has picked up a second season of its praised fantasy series Shadow and Bone, based on Leigh Bardugo’s bestselling Grishaverse novels. The streamer ordered eight one-hour episodes for Season 2 of the series, which comes from writer Eric Heisserer (Bird Box) and Stranger Things EP Shawn Levy and his 21 Laps Entertainment.
The renewal follows strong viewership numbers for the first season, which was watched by more than 55 million member households in its first 28 days, according to Netflix. The series made the Top 10 list in 93 countries around the world and hit No. 1 in 79 countries including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Russia, Spain, South Africa, and the U.S.
Starring Jessie Mei Li as Alina Starkov, the cast includes Archie Renaux (Malyen Oretsev), Freddy Carter (Kaz Brekker), Amita Suman (Inej), Kit Young (Jesper Fahey), Ben Barnes (General Kirigan), Danielle Galligan (Nina Zenik) and Calahan Skogman (Matthias Helvar), all set to reprise their roles in Season 2. Additional casting details will be revealed at a later date.
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Created, written and executive produced by Heisserer, Shadow and Bone brings together the stories and characters of both Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows, two overlapping series that take place in Bardugo’s Grishaverse.
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Shadow and Bone finds us in a war-torn world where lowly soldier and orphan Alina Starkov (Mei) has just unleashed an extraordinary power that could be the key to setting her country free. With the monstrous threat of the Shadow Fold looming, Alina is torn from everything she knows to train as part of an elite army of magical soldiers known as Grisha. But as she struggles to hone her power, she finds that allies and enemies can be one and the same and that nothing in this lavish world is what it seems. There are dangerous forces at play, including a crew of charismatic criminals, and it will take more than magic to survive.
“I’m honored and thrilled to return to the Grishaverse and continue the stories of these endearing characters, particularly Milo,” said Heisserer.
The series falls under the Netflix overall deal for Levy’s 21 Laps. Bardugo also serves as an executive producer on the series, produced by Netflix. Pouya Shahbazian (the Divergent series) also serves as an executive producer alongside Bardugo as well as Levy, Dan Levine, Dan Cohen and Josh Barry for 21 Laps.
“I’ve been writing in the Grishaverse for nearly 10 years now, so I’m thrilled we get to keep this adventure going,” said Bardugo. “There are so many places we’ve barely gotten to visit and I can’t wait to introduce our audience to more of the saints, soldiers, thugs, thieves, princes, and privateers who make this world so much fun to explore. It’s going to be real magic to see our brilliant, talented cast expand.”
With over 2.5 million copies sold in the English language alone, Bardugo’s Grishaverse books have been translated into 38 languages around the world to date. Following the series launch on Netflix, the Shadow and Bone trilogy and Six of Crows duology returned to bestseller lists worldwide and has spent over a month at No. 1 on the New York Times Bestseller list.
“My 21 Laps colleagues and I are thrilled that audiences around the world can continue to explore the Grishaverse and revel in the epic, unique storytelling of Shadow and Bone,” said Levy. “The fun of our jobs as producers is the collaboration with creative partners who inspire us. Leigh Bardugo and Eric Heisserer are two such partners; together they have created a world and pantheon of characters that fans all over the globe have embraced. We can’t wait to take viewers on the wild ride that comes next…”
Levy recently expanded his television overall deal and signed a first-look deal for features with the streaming giant. 21 Laps is one of Netflix’s most prolific producers, with numerous series in production and more than 15 additional series and films in active development. In addition to Stranger Things, which is heading into its fourth season, series include docuseries Unsolved Mysteries and upcoming family limited series Lost Ollie.
Along with 10 feature films in development at Netflix, 21 Laps produced a new upcoming horror-thriller film alongside James Wan, There’s Someone Inside Your House, that will be released later this year. Levy also recently wrapped principal photography on The Adam Project, a new film starring Ryan Reynolds that Levy is directing and producing.
Shadow and Bone premiered on April 23 and is currently streaming worldwide on Netflix.
You can watch the renewal announcement below.
Unstoppable: YA Fantasy Author Leigh Bardugo on World-Building and Having Faith in Your Abilities | The WD Interview
In this interview from the March/April 2018 issue of Writer’s Digest—including outtakes that didn't appear in the magazine—bestselling author Leigh Bardugo discusses finding YA fantasy stardom and why, if pursuing a dream, you’re always on the right track.
BAIHLEY GENTRYFEB 2, 2018
Writer's Digest March/April 2018 Cover
Writer's Digest March/April 2018 Cover
In this full interview from the March/April 2018 issue of Writer’s Digest—including outtakes that didn't appear in the magazine—bestselling author Leigh Bardugo discusses finding YA fantasy stardom and why, if you're pursuing a dream, you're always on the right track.
Leigh Bardugo has always written the stories she wanted to write.
When querying her debut, Shadow and Bone—in which she introduced readers to a Czarist Russia-inspired world where individuals called Grisha have the mystical ability to manipulate matter—Bardugo was faced with a publishing-industry reality. Although young adult novels were popular at the time, and her premise was unique and compelling, no literary agents seemed interested in epic or high fantasy books for young readers.
She forged ahead anyway. “I knew very little about the market. I learned that many [agents] would not even entertain the idea of that kind of book,” she says. “It’s wise to know what’s out there, [but don’t] let that hinder you. If you have an idea, pursue it. [Think] about things that make your story a story that only you could tell—those are the things that will stand out.”
The strength of that story did eventually resonate with a rep, and the series was sold in a three-book deal in 2010. Within a week of its release in 2012, Shadow and Bone skyrocketed to the top of The New York Times bestseller list—as did her six books after that: 2013’s Siege and Storm and 2014’s Ruin and Rising, which rounded out the Grisha trilogy; 2015’s Six of Crows and 2016’s Crooked Kingdom, a “heist-con” duology Bardugo likens to “Ocean’s 11 meets Game of Thrones”; and her two latest stand-alones in 2017: The Language of Thorns, her first short story collection, and Wonder Woman: Warbringer, about the superhero’s teen years.
In sum, her books have sold more than 1 million copies combined internationally, and have earned such accolades as RT Reviewers Choice Awards in 2012 and 2015, and multiple starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Reviews, and School Library Journal. Bardugo regularly writes short stories for Tor.com, and she has appeared in various anthologies, including Last Night a Superhero Saved My Life with notable names like Jodi Picoult and Neil Gaiman, and Slasher Girls & Monster Boys alongside Jonathan Maberry and Kendare Blake.
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Despite the impressive trajectory of her career, the path from aspiring author to bestseller was a circuitous one. Born in Jerusalem and raised in Southern California, Bardugo’s lifelong aspiration to be a writer led her to earn a degree in English from Yale. While struggling for years to finish a first draft of a novel (“I didn’t know yet that I was an outliner, and how badly I needed structure in order to work”), she took jobs in copywriting, advertising and as a Hollywood makeup and special effects artist. It wasn’t until she brushed off “some pretty wonky ideas” espoused by media, TV and film about what it meant to produce creative work that Bardugo was able to embrace a “terrible, messy, ugly first draft.” That experience taught her something valuable: “Let go of the idea that somehow you can outsmart a first draft,” she says. “Because I have never met anybody who can.”
The YA fantasy maestro took a break from promoting The Language of Thorns and Wonder Woman: Warbringer to talk world-building, personal perseverance, and more with WD.
The runaway success of a debut can put a lot of pressure on subsequent follow-ups. How did you manage to cope with that so gracefully?
When a book lists, there’s the illusion of runaway success. My [first book] listed, but it’s not as if you hit the New York Times bestseller list, and all of a sudden they give you the keys to a magical clubhouse and you’ve suddenly arrived. That’s one book, and a book does not make a career.
Certainly, I had a wonderful push from my publisher and got very lucky. I’m very aware of what it means to have a publisher back you. But your job as a writer, no matter what else is happening, is to continue to produce work—whether you’re succeeding or failing. [You have to put] aside ideas about sales or success or ambition, and just work. You know, I think I have a journey that looks smooth from the outside. And I’m always a little hesitant to talk about it because I don’t want people to get a false impression about what it takes to get published. But [up until the point of publishing Shadow and Bone], I did face plenty of rejection, and even after I signed with [my agent], every single one of those rejections stung. Because the marvel of the information age is that you’re still getting email rejections months and months after you sent them. [Laughs].
And so, until Shadow and Bone came out, I would read those rejections—because, of course, I had to read every single one of them—and I would think, Well, maybe they’re right and everybody else is wrong. Part of the journey is that horrific balance of, you know, delusions of grandeur and abject humility that I think writers walk the line of all the time.
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You’ve talked about losing faith in your ability to become a professional writer. What would you tell others who are struggling with that same feeling?
I want to be really clear about something: I think we kind of fetishize the creative life. We have the vision of what it means to be an author, where you sit in your garret or looking out at your view and you give everything to your art and you commit fully to it. But the reality is that most of us have bills to pay. We have loans to pay off. We have educations to pay for. Some of us have children to take care of or other relatives or dependents or responsibilities.
And the idea that somehow you’re not a real writer if you are pursuing taking care of yourself and your life, as you pursue your art, is an incredibly damaging one. Very few people have the wherewithal or the safety net to be able to pursue writing full-time from moment one. And I want people to understand that you can absolutely work a job, sometimes two jobs, and have those responsibilities—and still write. I didn’t fail to become a writer, and therefore had to take a job. I had to take a job to keep a roof over my head because I had student loans to pay off. And that’s the way it works.
For writers trying to balance life and art, how would you encourage them to stay motivated in pursuing their passion?
Set realistic goals. Sometimes that means doing something like NaNoWriMo, or it means saying, “I’m just going to write 500 words a day, but I’m going to write 500 words a day.” Or “I’m going to do writing sprints for 30 minutes before work.” Or in the 45 minutes when my kid is napping, or whatever it is. Carve out a time, find a process that works for you and don’t compare yourself to anybody else.
[And] get offline. Stop reading about what other authors are doing. Stop reading reviews. Let yourself be immersed in the story that you’re writing.
Remember: There is no expiration date on your talent. I did not publish my first book until I was 35 years old. If you have a story to tell, it doesn’t matter when you tell it. Just get it onto the page and let go of any of the ideas that somehow it’s less worthwhile because it took you a little longer to get there than it took others.
Man, you’re inspiring me!
[Laughs.] Oh, good. Do it. Do it.
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You’ve said before that there is no right way to write a book. You’ve been publishing at least one book per year since 2012, which is an impressive output. Describe your process.
I’m an outliner. I write through a three-act structure. I build all of my books in pretty much the exact same way: I have the idea, I write it out onto a single page so that I essentially have a book that is one-page long, and then I begin to fill in all of the things that I know. I build this kind of ramshackle zero-draft, that operates as an extended outline, and that is what becomes the musculature of the book. Now, when I get into the work of actually writing the scenes and revising the book into something that it can be, that process changes a little depending on the project.
Everybody processes differently, but [the exact method] is something you can keep coming back to when you feel psychologically embattled. A big part of writing is the discomfort of the work not being what you want it to be and the feelings of doubt or failure that come with not being able to make the idea instantly into what you want it to be.
Your books have very elaborate, well-rounded worlds. I haven’t read a book in a long time where I felt so there. When world-building, where do you typically begin?
I start with my characters and with the story, the plot. When a reader enters the first chapter of your book, they’re trying to get their bearings. It’s our job as authors to give them the signals they need in order to be able to navigate that world. The great challenge of world-building is not building the world. You could build a world with maps and languages and all these things [and still be missing something]. It’s releasing that information to the reader. The world-building that really falls into place first is what I always describe as the sense of power—helping readers understand how power flows in the book. That could mean governmental power, personal power, magical power, whatever. But [determining how power flows] is going to determine how your characters behave on the page, and what they’re able or not able to do.
You had help creating the Grisha Trilogy’s Ravkan language from David Peterson, who assisted with developing the Dothraki language in HBO’s "Game of Thrones." What was that like?
David and I met at Worldcon several years ago. I went to a presentation of his on Dothraki. He has been kind enough to be a resource for me as we’ve worked through the [Grisha] books, although we do occasionally butt heads because he wants me to be much more ambitious in my language in the book, and he’s very probably right.
You write a lot of diverse characters without falling victim to stereotypes. Do you think attitudes about diversity in publishing have shifted, or does the industry still have a ways to go?
I think both of those things are true. I think that there’s a new dedication to making sure that not only is representation better, but that marginalized authors and voices that maybe didn’t have voices before are increasingly given platforms in publishing. And that is not only as writers, but as editors and in everything from publicity to sales. That said, I don’t think there’s any question that there’s a long way to go because that is a long process and because until the fundamental power structures change, until the gatekeepers are different, I don’t think we’re going to see the kind of change that we really need to see—in the way not only that stories are told, but in the way they reach readers.
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I’m sure many authors ask you what’s trending in YA. What do you think is the ideal balance of writing what you’re passionate about and understanding what’s drawing readers in the industry?
You have to know the market. So you have to know what’s selling, what isn’t selling anymore, what people are fatigued by. But that doesn’t mean you can say, “Oh, well, I [can ’t write that ever].” There was a period of time where people would say, “Oh, no more vampire books,” or “no more dystopians,” or no more this or that. But that is really false because what that actually meant was no more of that particular kind of story. We need a different take on vampires or we need to see a dystopian that is simply described as science fiction. YA shifts and moves faster than most other categories because so much work is being generated and consumed so quickly. And to be frank, I think if I brought Shadow and Bone out now, it would not have the same reception it had in 2012. Be aware of the market, but really, being aware of the market is just one part of being a storyteller and thinking about craft.
I heard you have a band, which is probably the coolest side hustle ever. What type of music do you play?
Our lead guitarist would probably punch me for this, but I’ve always described it as “geek rock.” It’s sort of like if you put the Pixies and the New Pornographers and a little bit of They Might Be Giants in a blender. I mostly sing. Unfortunately, all of our lives got taken over by adulthood: Our guitarist had a baby. Our bassist had a baby. Our drummer bought a house. I landed my dream job. But we do occasionally meet up for band brunch and one of these days we’ll have a reunion show.
I think that when you’re writing, being creative in other ways is really useful and therapeutic. And whether that’s creating visual art or making music—or hell, even baking—as long as you’re doing something that’s keeping you engaged and keeping you from chewing over reviews on Goodreads, I think you’re better off.
The Language of Thorns is a collection of short stories—your first such project. What led you to take a departure from novels?
Well, I had been wanting to write a collection of folktales for a while. I wrote the first of these short stories back in 2012, and I thought it might be exciting to write an illustrated collection of them. But at the time, it really was not something that was on the table. I was at the start of [the Shadow and Bone] trilogy and these kinds of books are also a little bit of a gamble. I wasn't in a position to take that gamble yet.
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You’re no stranger to short prose, having written short works for several anthologies and for Tor.com for years. I think people often think short stories are “easier” than novels.
Yeah. I like writing short stories. I think, for me at least, it's incredibly challenging. But I also think I've gotten—I hope I've gotten—better as a writer. I hope my prose has gotten [stronger]. And I think a big part of that was the process of writing short stories for [outlets like] Tor.com. That was a big part of why I was able to progress in my work. It’s a different muscle that you're flexing, and it forces you to really think on the sentence level. It's a great exercise for writers to do, even if you don't intend to publish them.
Do you see any of those characters from The Language of Thorns or your other short stories making an appearance in a later novel?
I don't think so. These [in The Language of Thorns] are the folktales and fairytales that my characters would have grown up on. And so they exist in a time that is blurry in recollection. So, it should be hard to take apart what is real and what isn't, in the same way that there's usually some kernel of truth hidden in our folktales and fairytales.
I will say that I really enjoyed writing "When Water Sang Fire,” and there was a part of me that wanted to make it into a book. It's the longest story in the collection. But I don't know that that will ever happen. I don't think you can write something in a world—at least I know this is true for fantasy—without feeling like you're opening new doors to new places. And that's definitely something that happens even within a short story. And in those stories, I got to play with different kinds of magic and I got to occupy that kind of fun, all-knowing storyteller space, which I always enjoy and that I don't usually use in the bulk of my writing.
What’s next for you?
Well, King of Scars is the first book in my upcoming duology that continues the story of the Grishaverse, and will pick up the story of Nikolai Lantsov, the young king of Ravka. And I’m [also working on] Ninth House, my first novel for adults. It is the start of a series set at Yale, a dark fantasy that focuses on the secret societies among East Coast elites. I’ve got a couple of other things cooking, but nothing I can discuss just yet.
Leigh Bardugo
USA flag (b.1975)
Leigh Bardugo was born in Jerusalem, raised in Los Angeles, and graduated from Yale University. She lives in Hollywood and indulges her fondness for glamour, ghouls, and costuming in her other life as makeup artist L.B. Benson.
Genres: Young Adult Fantasy, Fantasy, Mystery, Science Fiction
New Books
September 2022
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Marple
January 2023
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Hell Bent
(Alex Stern, book 2)
Series
Shadow and Bone Trilogy
0.5. The Witch of Duva (2012)
1. Shadow & Bone (2012)
aka The Gathering Dark
2. Siege and Storm (2013)
2.5. The Too-Clever Fox (2013)
2.6. Little Knife (2014)
3. Ruin and Rising (2014)
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Six of Crows
1. Six of Crows (2015)
2. Crooked Kingdom (2016)
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King of Scars
1. King of Scars (2019)
2. Rule of Wolves (2021)
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Alex Stern
1. Ninth House (2019)
2. Hell Bent (2023)
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Collections
The Fierce Reads Anthology (2012) (with Anna Banks, Jennifer Bosworth, Emmy Laybourne and Marissa Meyer)
Modified: Cyborgs, Mutants, and Dystopia (2012) (with Ann Aguirre, Gennifer Albin, Katherine Applegate, Michael Grant, Lish McBride, Marissa Meyer and Gabrielle Zevin)
Kisses and Curses (2015) (with Ann Aguirre, Gennifer Albin, Anna Banks, Jessica Brody, Lauren Burniac, Katie Finn, Nikki Kelly, Emmy Laybourne, Lish McBride, Jennifer Mathieu, Marissa Meyer, Caragh O'Brien and Marie R)
The Language of Thorns (2017)
The Lives of Saints (2020)
Marple (2022) (with Naomi Alderman, Agatha Christie, Alyssa Cole, Lucy Foley, Elly Griffiths, Natalie Haynes, Jean Kwok, Val McDermid, Karen M McManus, Dreda Say Mitchell, Kate Mosse and Ruth Ware)
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Series contributed to
Some of the Best from Tor.com (with Dale Bailey, Beth Bernobich, Jedediah Berry, Ben Burgis, John Chu, Tina Connolly, Paul Cornell, Cory Doctorow, Charles Stross, Genevieve Valentine and Carrie Vaughn)
Some of the Best From Tor.com: 2013 Edition (2013)
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DC Icons
1. Wonder Woman: Warbringer (2017)
The DC Icons Series Boxed Set (omnibus) (2018) (with Marie Lu and Sarah J Maas)
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Non fiction
The Severed Moon (2019)
Leigh Bardugo is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Ninth House and the creator of the Grishaverse (now a Netflix original series) which spans the Shadow and Bone trilogy, the Six of Crows duology, the King of Scars duology—and much more. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple anthologies including The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. She lives in Los Angeles and is an associate fellow of Pauli Murray College at Yale University.
For information on new releases and appearances, sign up for Leigh's newsletter: http://bit.ly/bardugonews.
'Farewell For Now:' Leigh Bardugo On 'Rule Of Wolves'
April 7, 20217:00 AM ET
Petra Mayer at NPR headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 21, 2019. (photo by Allison Shelley)
PETRA MAYER
Twitter
Rule of Wolves, by Leigh Bardugo
Imprint
Leigh Bardugo's new Rule of Wolves opens with a little vignette of terror: A winged monster attacking a rural farm. But readers of her Grishaverse books will know this isn't just any monster — it's the king himself, Nikolai of Ravka.
In the previous book, King of Scars, Nikolai helped defeat a terrible darkness threatening Ravka, but he hasn't escaped unscathed; a little piece of that darkness now lives inside him, a demonic presence he can't really control. And on top of all that, he has to deal with the everyday struggles of ruling: Keeping the people on his side, the restive nobles happy, the treasury full and Ravka's vulturous neighbors from invading.
Luckily, Nikolai isn't alone. Beloved Grishaverse characters like General Zoya and Nina the magic user-turned-spy return with extensive POV chapters of their own, and there are even some surprising new perspectives.
"When I was outlining the novel, I considered just focusing on events within Ravka, but it really didn't feel right," Bardugo tells me in an email interview. "There was just too much at stake for the other characters and nations in this book. It also gave me a chance to touch on characters and story elements that had only existed as antagonists in previous Grishaverse books. I think I'm always interested in the people who aren't generals or master spies or royalty. The people caught in the crossfire.
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And, of course, there's a new POV that was necessary to the plot but was also just a complete pleasure to write, pure drama."
Previous Grisha books had battles and conflicts galore ... but this truly feels like a war story. Was this your intent? And what was the writing/research process like?
Leigh Bardugo
Christina Guerrero
I really didn't want to write a war book. I don't like writing grand battles and I find it tiresome to research weapons development and military strategy. Luckily I have friends who work in defense and who love nothing more than to take apart historic battles. In some ways, this is a book about trying to avoid war and its costs. But I guess I discovered, right alongside Nikolai, that sometimes the fire cannot be contained.
You upset expectations for several main characters — not to be too spoilery or anything, but tell me a little bit about what's going on with our heroes here.
"Upset" is an interesting word because I've known since the start where these characters are headed. I want to challenge them, force them to push past who they thought they were to who they really are. For Nikolai that means understanding what he really wants for himself and Ravka. For Zoya that means learning to distinguish between fear and vulnerability. And for Nina, that means letting go of the grief and hate she's been carrying for so long. I guess I want to challenge my readers too.
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There's a recurring dark joke in the book — no matter how bad things are, there's always more, because it's Ravka. Why is Ravka so particularly beset?
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Ravka has a very particular identity among the countries of the Grishaverse. It's surrounded by enemies. It has spent hundreds of years in near isolation because of the Shadow Fold. It is very much a garrison state so there's a tremendous desire to survive, but there's also a kind of soul-deep shrug that goes along with Ravkans knowing the odds. That's what Nikolai is up against. He's trying to convince a nation that has stopped hoping that it might be worth hoping again.
Another thing that comes up a lot is the question of what makes a monster, and what it means to be a monster — why did you want to explore that?
That's a question that's been at play since the first book. How far will you go? Who deserves to be redeemed? There's so much power in the idea of becoming monstrous. I think we see that in the way some women and girls choose to adorn themselves now. They don't care about being pretty or palatable. They paint their lips black, dye their hair green, file their nails into claws. Maybe the monster is free to make choices and take actions that the ordinary person is not.
What's next for the Grishaverse? (MOAR KAZ PLZ THANK YOU.)
I really don't know! With the show premiering on Netflix ... this seemed like the right moment to step back. There are so many stories I want to write and worlds I want to explore. I have every intention of returning to the Grishaverse; I just don't know when. So I wrote Rule of Wolves as a finale, a "farewell for now."
Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo: ‘People sneer at the things women and girls love’
The author of the hit YA fantasy talks about Netflix stardom, making her novels more diverse and why she had to give up a close relationship with her fans
Ben Barnes and Jessie Mei Li in the Netflix adaptation
Ben Barnes and Jessie Mei Li in the Netflix adaptation Photograph: Courtesy Of Netflix
Sian Cain
Sian Cain
@siancain
Mon 17 May 2021 02.00 EDT
When Leigh Bardugo first came face to face with her characters, she wept. In a video that was uploaded everywhere from YouTube to TikTok, the author stepped on to the Budapest set of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone and embraced her heroine, Alina – or rather, the actor Jessie Mei Li in costume. “You guys look amazing,” Bardugo repeats in the video, between hugs and tears. “You look so incredible. It’s actually eerie.”
“Adaptation is scary,” Bardugo says now. “I don’t begrudge any author the right to say that they don’t want to do it, because we’ve all seen it go wrong. It would be heartbreaking to be locked out of the house that you built. But I got lucky, because the people I collaborated with cared deeply – not just about the material, but the people who love it.”
Leigh Bardugo.
‘Adaptation is scary’ ... Leigh Bardugo. Photograph: Orion Books
To understand how popular Bardugo’s books are – more than 5m sold in English, translated into 50 languages, a No1 show on Netflix and countless passionate fans, including one Tiktoker steadily adapting the books into an unofficial musical – is to understand why young adult fiction itself is so significant. Her seven YA books, starting with Shadow and Bone, meet very fundamental human desires – to be recognised as special, powerful or loved. They are filled with high emotional stakes and transformative life moments – whether that is a first kiss or discovering you are a powerful sorcerer with the potential to save the world.
Like Twilight’s Bella or Katniss from The Hunger Games, Bardugo’s Alina is yanked from obscurity. She is an orphan conscripted to the First Army, a non-magical force in the kingdom of Ravka that serves as cannon fodder, when an accident reveals that she is actually a Grisha, one of the mysterious magical elite who are usually identified in childhood and form Ravka’s feared Second Army. But Alina is no ordinary Grisha. She is the Sun Summoner of prophecy with the power to destroy the Fold, a gigantic, shadowy zone filled with dark creatures that has split Ravka for centuries. So Alina is whisked away from her dishy childhood friend Mal to be trained by the equally dishy Darkling, a Ravkan general who wields the shadow to her sun, and holds a secret, vested interest in her power.
A special, magical girl with two boys fighting over her: so far, so YA. But Bardugo’s books are unique in a few ways: their rich, tsarist Russia-inspired setting; her ornate social hierarchies and magic systems; Alina’s prickliness. They are popular for the same reasons snobs may mock them: they’re nerdy, romantic and appealing to young women. “Teenage girls have so much sway over culture, yet people sneer at the things that women and girls love, and are contemptuous of the creators of that content, particularly if they are women,” Bardugo says. “To me, that contempt speaks to a deep fear. When you start dictating culture, money gets involved and people take notice. When I see someone deride things that women and girls find pleasure in, all I see is someone fearful that women will overtake the culture they’ve had dominion over for so long.”
‘Our plan is it will be quite different from the books.’ Jessie Mei Li as Alina in Shadow and Bone.
‘Our plan is it will be quite different from the books.’ Jessie Mei Li as Alina in Shadow and Bone. Photograph: David Appleby/Netflix
With her dark lipstick and gothic clothing, often seen with a silver-headed cane (Bardugo has osteonecrosis), the 46-year-old is the antithesis of California beach culture. But though she was born in Jerusalem, Bardugo was raised in Los Angeles, a precocious reader, as lonely children often are. Bullied for her Jewish faith and relative lack of wealth by rich kids at school, she was also “very unhappy” at home. So she retreated into Frank Herbert, Isaac Asimov, Octavia Butler, Diana Wynne Jones and Stephen King. “Reading, like writing, was a survival strategy when I was young because these were ways of feeling that my world could be much larger than it actually was,” she says. “It was inevitable that I would end up writing sci-fi or fantasy.”
While it may have been inevitable, it was not immediate. In the 1990s she went to Yale, where she “found my tribe, my fellow weirdos”. She joined Wolf’s Head, one of the university’s eight secret societies, dating back to the 19th century, and which only began admitting women in 1992. This would eventually inspire her first novel for adults, 2019’s Ninth House, in which Yale’s secret societies have supernatural specialties. In the years between, she worked as a journalist, wrote movie trailers, transcribed footage for reality TV show The Bachelor and did a stint as a Hollywood make-up artist. This last job freed her from writing, so she could finally concentrate on her first book, 2012’s Shadow and Bone.
She considers herself a latecomer, landing her book deal at 35, but her career took off at breakneck speed. Within 37 days, she had an agent and a three-book deal, but she still doubted that she’d be published: “I had wanted to be a writer since I was a kid, but I could not finish a manuscript. I always lost momentum, I had no idea what I was doing.” She wrote Shadow and Bone in eight months.
She credits her success to “fortuitous timing”. Shadow and Bone was published in 2012, in the aftermath of the success of Twilight and The Hunger Games. Adults who might have been embarrassed to buy teen books five years earlier purchased Bardugo’s without thinking twice. It was an immediate hit. Siege and Storm followed in 2013, and Ruin and Rising in 2014.
Then, while driving in LA, she had a flash of inspiration from the strangest of places: a billboard for the 2014 George Clooney and Matt Damon film The Monuments Men. This got her thinking about the Clooney and Damon film Ocean’s Eleven – “and then of course, I had to write a fantasy heist! I had every intention of moving away from the Grishaverse, but I was so excited. I had the characters in my head waiting to be called up, and I realised that I could bring them all together, so I wrote Six of Crows.”
The Dregs … Six of Crows characters in Shadow and Bone.
The Dregs … Six of Crows characters in Netflix’s Shadow and Bone. Photograph: Netflix
In Six of Crows, Ocean’s 11 become the Dregs gang. The heist mastermind is Kaz Brekker, a street-smart club owner who walks with a limp and a cane. His companions include Inej Ghafa, a devout young woman who survived sex trafficking to become a much-feared spy; Jesper Fahey, a bisexual sharp shooter; and Wylan Van Eck, a merchant’s son with dyslexia, and Jesper’s eventual boyfriend. Where JK Rowling announced her characters as being gay (Dumbledore) or potentially not white (Hermione) years after finishing her books, Bardugo did it on the page and doesn’t want applause for it. “It isn’t my place to take credit for representation and to say, ‘Oooh, look at my diverse book.’ “It is our job to make our worlds welcoming to all,” she says. “And I think it’s garbage when people look for congratulations, especially when they don’t make something explicit on the page. That is just bad writing.”
Bardugo realised that her first trilogy was overwhelmingly white and rectified this from Six of Crows onwards; in the Netflix adaptation, Alina was re-written as having Shu heritage, Bardugo’s equivalent of east Asian. “I am very proud of Shadow and Bone but it is laden with tropes,” Bardugo says. “I think that was because I was echoing a lot of the books that I had grown up with. But as I wrote more, I gained confidence. I felt I could reflect our world more authentically. I look back and see mistakes that I wish I could alter. My world is not straight, white and homogenous. I don’t want to be. So why should my fiction look that way?”
Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone were combined in Netflix’s adaptation, a suggestion made by the showrunner, Oscar-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer. Bardugo thinks it worked “beautifully”: “It makes the world feel bigger. It’s a much more fitting introduction to a universe that I’ve been working on for a decade now. I’m very proud of the show. I feel grateful for all the love and care that went into it.” In an episode filmed in a Budapest palace, Bardugo even makes a cameo, hugging Alina in an ornate purple coat.
MEI LI JESSIE in SHADOW AND BONE (2021), directed by LEE TOLAND KRIEGER and ERIC HEISSERER. Credit: NETFLIX / Album
2F1D1W3 MEI LI JESSIE in SHADOW AND BONE (2021), directed by LEE TOLAND KRIEGER and ERIC HEISSERER. Credit: NETFLIX / Album
Shadow and Bone star Jessie Mei Li: ‘Fans find out everything’
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But as her fame grows, so too has her caution around her fans. She used to chat freely with them, sharing their art, costumes and playlists; now she must contend with the peculiar ownership fans can feel for what they love. “When I was new, it was so thrilling to find people who wanted to talk to me about these books. Fans were vital to the life of that first trilogy. It is a rare privilege to be seven novels into a series,” she says. “But, unfortunately, as my readership has grown, it’s become less possible to be that engaged. That feels like a tremendous loss. I used to be very active on Twitter and, quite honestly, I don’t feel comfortable interacting there any more, so I stopped.” Her fandom simply got too big. “Now it has its own life,” she says, sadly.
And she’s not getting any less famous. With Heisserer, she has “a grand plan” for more seasons of Shadow and Bone: “We are all crossing our fingers and hoping that Netflix will give us the chance.” There are seven books – the Grisha trilogy, plus the Six of Crows duology and the King of Scars duology – but she doesn’t think it would take seven seasons: “Our plan is it will be quite different from the books.”
Bardugo published the seventh book in the series, Rule of Wolves, in March, which she is calling the “finale, of sorts” for the Grishaverse. She had worked hard to make it come out before Netflix’s adaptation, because “I knew it would be the last opportunity to release a Grishaverse book that just belonged to the readers. I wanted to offer closure.” Is it really the end? “We’ll see! I don’t know. There is a big door left open. But I want to write books because I feel compelled to, not because I feel an obligation to. And for now, I want to take a step back.” She may visit “Ravka” in person, to hug her creations in Budapest again. “And maybe in three months or three years, I will want to return to Ravka on the page. Right now, I don’t.”
Rule of Wolves (Orion, £14.99) and Shadow and Bone (Orion, £7.99) are out now. Shadow and Bone is available to stream on Netflix now.
Suya Chry·Books·July 6, 2019·3 min read
A Guide To Leigh Bardugo’s ‘Grishaverse’
Grishaverse Leigh Bardugo Book Series
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Image: Book Riot
You might know people who have gushed about reading the Grishaverse by Leigh Bardugo, and not understand all the hype surrounding just a YA fantasy book series. But trust me, the Grishaverse is much more to a dedicated reader. Filled with magical powers, a world with places inspired by landmarks of real world, exceptional characters involved in the most dangerous situations and their survival with aid of friendship, love, and relationships, the Grishaverse is truly a work of art.
If you would like to try out this brilliant series and don’t know where to start, here’s a short guide to understand it a little better. Spoiler free, of course!
THE BOOKS
Shadow and Bone Trilogy
Shadow and Bone | Siege and Storm | Ruin and Rising
Shadow and Bone Trilogy Leigh Bardugo
The first series in the Grishaverse follows Alina Starkov, a not-good-for-anything girl. But on her trip in the Shadow Fold, when her best friend is attacked, her dormant power is exposed to the world. Alina is whisked away to Little Palace by the Darkling, whose power is similar to hers. She trains to be a Grisha because her powers could save the country and Alina becomes the Sun Summoner, hope of the people of Ravka that depend on her to destroy the fold. But there’s darkness everywhere, her best friend Mal is missing, she has unusual feelings for the Darkling, and worst of all, she may not be able to summon the sun again.
Six of Crows Duology
Six of Crows | Crooked Kingdom
Six of Crows Duology Leigh Bardugo
This character-driven duology is an epic one and the best of Grishaverse according to many. Kaz Brekker is offered a huge sum in exchange for an impossible heist. The impossibility doesn’t stop him but he needs partners and so, the team is made. Inej, the whisperer, shadow spy. Jesper, the sharpshooter. Wylan, the mysterious rich boy. Nina, the cheerful heartrender. Together, the six of them sail to the Ice Court in Fjerda, the most protected place to rescue Bo Yul-Bayar who has the key to destruction of Grisha.
Along with the ice and water, there is an exceptional bond and banter between the six teammates, making this easily Bardugo’s best work. If you want to start the series, I would recommend starting with this one.
King of Scars Leigh BardugoNikolai Duology
King of Scars | TBA – Not yet released
This is the third part of Grishaverse, and only the first book, King of Scars, has been released. It portrays Nikolai Lantsov, a sort-of-main character in the trilogy who also made a short appearance in Six of Crows duology. Nikolai is one of the most loved characters in the saga. Funny, charming, and a prince-turned-king, we all love him as we read him.
LOCATION
The Grisha world consists of several countries: Ravka, Fjerda, Shu Han, Kerch, Novyi Zem, and the Wandering Isles. The Grisha Trilogy and the Six of Crows duology are set mainly in Ravka and Kerch respectively, but there are references to the other nations. Bardugo has said that Ravka was inspired by Russia and Ketterdam, a city in Kerch by Amsterdam, and the similarities can be seen while reading the books.
POWERS
The form of magic introduced in Grishaverse is Small Science, and the people who can practice it are called Grisha, and mostly found in Ravka. Many other places, like Fjerda, consider Grisha to be monstrous and aim to destroy them.
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The Grisha are divided into three orders, Etherealki, Materialki, and Corporalki. The Etherealki are the order of Summoners and can summon elements of earth. These special powers, that aren’t completely magic, but manipulation of chemicals; science, are what make this fantasy intriguing.
TV ADAPTATION
Netflix is adapting the Grishaverse! This news brought fans to their knees when it was revealed a few months ago. Eric Heisserer, screenwriter of Bird Box, will combine Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows in an eight-episode series. The release date has not been confirmed yet but we are holding our breaths to see this potential masterpiece!
THE AUTHOR
Leigh Bardugo is a New York Times bestselling author of fantasy novels and the creator of the Grishaverse. With over three million copies sold, her Grishaverse spans the Shadow and Bone Trilogy, the Six of Crows Duology, The Language of Thorns, and King of Scars—with more to come. Bardugo was born in Jerusalem, Israel and grew up in Los Angeles, where her grandparents raised her. She attended Yale University, graduating with a degree in English in spring 1997. Before publishing her first novel, she worked in copywriting and journalism, as well as makeup and special effects.
Leigh Bardugo talks ‘Rule of Wolves,’ Netflix’s ‘Shadow and Bone’ series and heroic women
“I am thrilled by the idea of more people connecting with these characters or these stories, but it’s also absolutely terrifying,” she says as the TV adaptation approaches.
Leigh Bardugo is the author of “King of Scars” and “Rule of Wolves” among other books. (Photo credit: Christina Guerra/Courtesy of Macmillan )
Leigh Bardugo is the author of “King of Scars” and “Rule of Wolves” among other books. (Photo credit: Christina Guerra/Courtesy of Macmillan )
By LIZ OHANESIAN | Contributing Writer
PUBLISHED: March 28, 2021 at 8:34 a.m. | UPDATED: March 29, 2021 at 11:11 a.m.
When Leigh Bardugo finished “Ruin and Rising,” the third book in her Shadow and Bone trilogy published in 2014, she wanted a break from the Grishaverse, the Russian-inflected fantasy world that she had been building in her novels.
A billboard changed all that.
The L.A.-based author didn’t actually want to see what was being advertised — the film “The Monuments Men” — but it got her thinking about “Oceans 11” and that generated another idea.
“I had to pull over to the side of the road because I realized that I really wanted to write a fantasy heist,” she recalls on a recent phone call, “and I knew exactly where to set it, and I knew which characters I was going to bring together to try to pull off this impossible job.”
With that revelation, Bardugo fell back into the Grishaverse, where she’s spent a lot of time over the past few years. The fantasy heist concept morphed into her 2015 novel “Six of Crows” and its 2016 follow-up, “Crooked Kingdom.” Three years later, she would embark on another duology kicking off with the 2019 novel “King of Scars.” That book’s sequel, “Rule of Wolves,” is being published on March 30 through Orion Children’s Books. (Even so, she hasn’t spent all her time there, having authored the adult novel “Ninth House” and a Wonder Woman novel “Warbringer” during that time as well.)
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To date, the Grishaverse consists of one trilogy, two duologies, a short story collection and the recently published companion book “The Lives of Saints.” Promising even more interest in her work, the Netflix series, “Shadow and Bone,” its title taken from the book that launched this YA fantasy juggernaut, is set to premiere on April 23.
Back when Bardugo wrote “Shadow and Bone,” though, she had just wanted to finish that one book. “There was no Grishaverse. There was just me trying to write my first book,” she says.
“I had wanted to be a writer for a very long time, but I had no talent for finishing books,” Bardugo recalls. “I would start them, get about 20,000 words in, and come to a screeching halt, because I had no idea how to outline a story or what my own process as an author was.”
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In a scene from “Shadow and Bone,” Jessie Mei Li plays Alina Starkov. (Photo credit: David Appleby/Courtesy of Netflix)
As she wrote, though, Bardugo took notes for a potential trilogy, although there was no guarantee that her first novel would be published. She didn’t have an agent, didn’t know much about publishing and didn’t have any industry connections. Even after she found an agent, after the book sold, nothing was certain.
“Even if you are lucky enough to sell a trilogy, you don’t know if you’ll ever get to write that whole trilogy,” she says. “I have many friends who had very long arcs planned in multi-book series that they never got to write because the first book didn’t perform.”
But “Shadow and Bone” did perform very well. “I’m hesitant to ascribe too much to luck because I think women have a bad habit of doing that,” says Bardugo. “At the same time, there’s no question that I entered the market at the right moment.”
“Shadow and Bone,” released in 2012, hit at a time when fan communities were forming and thriving in online spaces. The book resonated with enough readers who would spread the word about this new fantasy world through the channels that were engaging fans of genre fiction. “I can’t explain why I was fortunate enough for that to happen,” says Bardugo.
Although, she adds, the book likely did benefit from the popularity of YA fiction and the desire for readers, particularly young women, to find books with characters that reflect them and their peers. She also notes that the success of YA, and similarly, romance novels, comes in spite of the public perception of these markets.
“The two genres that probably take the most flack in literature — they are young adult and romance right now,” she says. Not coincidentally, they are genres that are often written and read by women.
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these are genres that provide places for women to express desire and love for adventure, for the opportunity to be placed to heroic roles,” she says.
With her first trilogy set in the Grishaverse, Bardugo says she was “echoing” the stories that she read in her formative years. “It is very much a Chosen One story,” she explains, using a term that often applies to characters like Katniss Everdeen from “The Hunger Games” or Harry Potter. That concept evolved while writing the “Secret Crows” duology. “I think, in some ways, I was reacting to the idea of a Chosen One,” she says. Here, she wanted to focus on the lives of people in this world who were royalty or part of a prophecy.
With the “Nikolai” duology, which concludes with her most recent novel, Bardugo harks back to the characters from the first trilogy, although they have changed with time. “They’re characters who have had to live with the burden of a civil war of assuming power that, in some ways, is far beyond their years or level of experience, and who are dealing with all of the fallout from these huge world-shaking events that happened in the earlier book,” she says.
Bardugo describes the Grishaverse as being at a “crossroads” right now with the Netflix series premiere on the immediate horizon. “It’s a very strange and exciting and nerve-racking time,” she says. “I hope a lot of people will discover the book, and I am thrilled by the idea of more people connecting with these characters or these stories, but it’s also absolutely terrifying.”
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But, she adds, the series is in good hands. “I’ve once again been very fortunate because I’ve found really remarkable collaborators, and creative people to work on this with,” she says. “I know that the adaptation experience can often be a negative one for others, but this has been a really positive one for me.
“The way that I talk about ‘Rule of Wolves’ is as a goodbye for now,” she says. “There are other universes and worlds I want to explore, so I like to leave all the doors open. And I certainly don’t want to write books just for the sake of writing them. I want to feel compelled to tell a story before I tell it. So, anything is possible right now.”
Get a first look at 'Hell Bent,' the sequel to Leigh Bardugo's 'Ninth House'
“I know it’s been a long wait for readers, but I’m thrilled to throw open the doors of Lethe once again," Bardugo tells TODAY of the novel, out next January.
Courtesy Jen Castle Photography
March 31, 2022, 12:06 PM EDT
By Elena Nicolaou
Stately corridors with dark-wood panels. Mansions covered with ivy. Secret societies. Oh, and murder.
This is a mood board for Leigh Bardugo's enrapturing 2019 novel "Ninth House," which reimagines Yale's real secret societies as places where magic is practiced and passed down among generations of students.
During her first year at Yale, Galaxy "Alex" Stern — an L.A. transplant with the ability to see the dead — is drawn into this world through her membership at Lethe, the ninth secret society that watches over the other eight (and prevents them from taking their divination, seances, and blood magic too far).
Bardugo's upcoming novel "Hell Bent," out Jan. 10, 2023, will continue Alex's story, and picking up after that cliffhanger. If you recall, Darlington — a senior at Yale — is literally trapped in hell. Talk about a study abroad trip!
“I know it’s been a long wait for readers, but I’m thrilled to throw open the doors of Lethe once again and welcome them to another tale of murder and arcane magic set at Yale," Bardugo told TODAY in a statement.
According to the official synopsis, Alex is determined to break Darlington out of hell at all costs. But when faculty members start to die, she knows that the magic is getting out of control.
See the exclusive cover reveal of Leigh Bardugo's "Hell Bent."
See the exclusive cover reveal of Leigh Bardugo's "Hell Bent."Flatiron Books / Macmillan
As the synopsis reads, "Something deadly is at work in New Haven, and if Alex is going to survive, she’ll have to reckon with the monsters of her past and a darkness built into the university’s very walls."
Bardugo gave a preview of the upcoming novel in her own words: "'Hell Bent' is loaded with occult happenings, deadly grudges, forgotten poetry, peculiar romance, and bad behavior from villain and hero alike."
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Essentially, "Hell Bent" is poised to be another literary foray into a cloistered world, where the privileged use magic and other occult-based means to make changes — and not always of the good variety.
“Ninth House” was Bardugo’s first adult novel, and was inspired by the her time as as student at Yale University. Bardugo is also known for her young adult Grishaverse novels, which include the "Six of Crows" duology the "Shadow and Bone" trilogy. These novels were the inspiration for the Netflix series "Shadow and Bone."
As a writer, Bardugo said it was a joy to return to the Ivy League setting of "Ninth House" and "Hell Bent."
"It feels so good to be back in this weird, dark, thorny world with Alex Stern. She’s a heroine I never get sick of writing. She just refuses to play by the same rules as the people around her — and that’s a hell of a lot of fun,” Bardugo said.
'Shadow and Bone': Which of Leigh Bardugo's Books is The Netflix Show Based On?
BY SAMUEL SPENCER ON 4/23/21 AT 8:54 AM EDT
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Shadow and Bone is streaming now on Netflix, meaning fans are finally able to see their beloved Grishaverse brought to life. Those viewers get a double dose of the world from the first season of the show, which combines elements of two different series from fantasy author Leigh Bardugo.
The Netflix show takes its title from the first book of the Grisha trilogy, Shadow and Bone. It also adds in characters and ideas from her Six of Crows book. This novel took place years after the events of Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising, but the series intertwines the two worlds.
"Eric [Heisserer, the showrunner] wanted to do that from moment one," Bardugo told Winter is Coming. "In our first meeting we talked about that, and I loved the idea. I wanted the world to feel big from moment one, and we understood that if we were lucky enough to continue the story, we needed to introduce these characters early on to make it possible for that to happen."
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She continued: "Shadow and Bone is very much a classic chosen one story, and Six of Crows is not. Six of Crows is a heist story but it's also a story about people who don't have grand destinies, royal blood, great magical power...To me, bringing those two perspectives together in that first moment was much more powerful. It throws Alina's journey and Ravka's status as this isolated country into much sharper relief."
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Ben Barnes' character in 'Shadow and Bone' does not get a name until the third book.
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Though the show takes characters from Six of Crows, like Kaz Brekker (played by Freddy Carter), we see them before the events of that book, whose plot is rumored to be the basis of any potential Season 2.
This gives fans an insight into how the characters of Six of Crows became the people they are. In Episode 2 of Shadow and Bone, we see Inej Ghafa (Amita Suman) hesitate in taking a life, whereas the killings in the rest of the episodes leave her much more cold-blooded a killer by the time of the events of the book. This also explains why Six of Crows character Wylan Van Eck has not appeared yet. As the author tweeted, "I know there's been a lot of speculation, but Wylan is not in season 1. The Crows haven't met him yet."
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Though the majority of the action and characters come from Shadow and Bone and Six of Crows, some details from later books have also been included. We get General Kirigan's (Ben Barnes) name in the first set of episodes, for example, while in the books this was withheld until Ruin and Rising.
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The series is also able to expand the world because it is not all told in first person from the perspective of Alina (Jessie Mei Li). For example, we get to see Mal's (Cody Molko) journey rather than just have him tell it to Alina.
Critics of the show have also noted that the show improves on one element they saw in the book. As an NBC News review of the show put it: "This Netflix adaptation sets about improving on the source material's tired, sexist clichés at every turn, creating a lead character worthy of her own adventure series...this Alina is no passive narrator buffered about by fate, and she doesn't stand around while men puff their chests at each other over her. At every turn, she makes choices that steer her own story."
Shadow and Bone is streaming now on Netflix.
Leigh Bardugo's Book About Yale's Secret Societies Will "F*ck You Up A Little"
by Zan Romanoff
Oct. 9, 2019
In an interview, Leigh Bardugo talks about her adult debut novel 'Ninth House.'
Leigh Bardugo, photo courtesy of Jen Castle Photography.
She was walking home from the post office during her freshman year at Yale when it happened.
"I was reading a letter," Leigh Bardugo tells me, "and I looked up from the letter, and I was standing on Grove Street. On my left was this giant white marble mausoleum covered in wrought iron snakes, and on my right was a giant new Egyptian gate that said 'The Dead Shall Be Raised.' And I, the young goth child from Los Angeles, was like: 'I have come home.'"
Bardugo knew then that she wanted to write a fantasy novel set in the tombs of Yale’s secret societies, but it would take her over a decade, as well as writing and publishing eight wildly successful young adult novels (among them the bestselling Grishaverse series, which Netflix is in the process of adapting) to figure out how to approach what would become Ninth House, her adult debut.
That moment on Grove Street may have planted a seed, but it wasn’t until years later, when a friend started texting her pictures of their years at Yale in advance of a college reunion, that Bardugo really understood what she wanted Ninth House to be about.
"It was like this punch to the gut," she says. "There was no sense of nostalgia. I think I was supposed to feel some kind of warm sentiment when I saw these photos, and instead I felt like, 'Oh. Here's the reckoning.'"
Because while Bardugo has "very warm memories of Yale," she says, being confronted with images from her past reminded her that not everything that happened to her there was positive. "That was the start of me excavating the truth of my experiences there, and my friends' experiences there," she says. "And it was not comfortable."
The result is a book that is, at times, deeply uncomfortable to read, as it grapples with the grayest areas of trauma, desire, addiction, power and privilege. Ninth House imagines that each of Yale’s Ancient Eight societies practices a different form of magic; a shadowy ninth house, Lethe, keeps watch over them. The book’s heroine is Galaxy Stern, better known as Alex, a Los Angeles native whose natural ability to see the ghosts these societies’ magic attracts makes her an invaluable asset for Lethe.
What Lethe claims as a gift has been, for most of Alex’s life, a curse: Like so many women, she sees things that the people around her insist aren’t there — though in Alex’s case, the haunts are literal.
Before she arrives at Yale, Alex has been subject to various kinds of violence from the living and the dead. So at first, she’s seduced by the dream that the place seems to offer: the kindness of her roommates, the idea of a summer internship in a dean’s office, and the promise of normalcy, stability, and even comfort. But as the façade of the institutions that have embraced her fall away, she finds that behind them is a world no less violent and ugly than the one she left behind.
"We can banish those literal monsters, but to banish the figurative monster at the same time does a tremendous disservice to readers."
In writing Alex, Bardugo says she set out to create an anti-hero — not an unlikeable female character, but a straight up anti-hero. "I think Alex has been punished enough," she says. "And there was something really thrilling for me to just put a bat in her hand and let her go to town."
And while Alex is definitely tough in certain ways, it was important to Bardugo that she also always be actively dealing with what’s happened to her throughout the book: that the literal demons she vanquishes don’t stand in for her trauma, which will always, to some extent, be a part of her life.
"Monsters often operate metaphorically in fantasy. We can banish those literal monsters, but to banish the figurative monster at the same time does a tremendous disservice to readers, because trauma doesn't finish with the last page of a book,” Bardugo says.
"And for those of us who live with any kind of trauma in our past, the idea of purging it in some kind of magical way is offensive. Because we want to believe ourselves heroes who conquer these demons, and then when they keep coming back you think, 'Didn't I already fight this one? Am I not a good hero? Am I not deserving of a hero's narrative?'"
It’s precisely the dark and difficult subjects that Ninth House grapples with that led to a certain amount of pre-publication controversy around the book, which kicked off in earnest after copies were handed out at the Young Adult Literary Convention, or YALC, in June. (Bardugo says that when she asked whether this was appropriate, given that Ninth House is not a YA novel, she was told that other adult titles were also being made available at the festival.) Early readers started tweeting out trigger warnings about the book’s content, which led to calls for the book itself to be printed with those warnings included.
Bardugo thinks there should absolutely be a conversation about trigger warnings on books, but she feels strongly if they’re going to happen, they should be an industry-wide requirements, enforced by publishers. "Otherwise, all it does it stigmatize particular books," she says. There have been no similar campaigns around the work of male horror authors like Stephen King and Joe Abercrombie, she notes.
But beyond that, Bardugo is concerned by the ways that she’s been asked to justify her writing: by trotting out her own trauma as evidence that she’s allowed to do this work.
"In talking about other characters, I've talked about the fact that I'm a survivor of sexual assault," Bardugo says. "But I don't believe that I should have to put that on display to justify writing a novel. I'm disturbed by the performances we require of women authors. There's this wall that drops where people feel like you have, by writing a book, given them permission to bring out into the open the deepest parts of yourself."
Either way, Bardugo remains unapologetic about the book’s actual content. She knows that distilling Ninth House to a list of trigger warnings doesn’t do its story justice — that she strung together those disturbing incidents not just for shock and awe, but in service of a larger truth.
"I came here to write a book that's going to f*ck you up a little."
"The response of, 'Oh, this person just wanted to write about horrible things' disturbs me. It presumes a kind of mercenary approach to writing that is so alienating," Bardugo says. "You give your heart to a book. And sometimes the book eats your heart, and sometimes it returns your heart whole."
And anyway, what’s so wrong with a little bit of boundary-pushing? She says, "I have been accused of writing for shock value. And of course my defensiveness says, 'No I haven't! I was telling the truest story I could.'"
"But then I take a step back, and I say, 'Well, yes, I did want to shock you. I did want to disturb you.' That's what I came here for. I didn't come here to make you comfortable. I came here to write a book that's going to f*ck you up a little."
Ninth House will f*ck you up, but that’s not all it will do. Like all of Bardugo’s young adult novels, the world of Ninth House is richly imagined and remarkably textured. The book manages to conjure New Haven’s gothic aura as well as its modern urban reality with equal veracity. (If you went to Yale, there’s a joke about Yorkside in there that’s particularly delightful.)
And Alex is not just hurt, and hurting; she and her sidekick, the blue-blooded New Haven native Darlington, are carefully drawn in their roles as normal people trying to survive desperately abnormal circumstances. A scene in which a young Darlington catches his first glimpse of magic — which he won’t witness again until Lethe finds him pursuing it with suicidal fervor as a teenager — will feel achingly familiar to anyone who grew up seduced and then betrayed by the lure of fantasy novels.
Ninth House is just as much about hope and friendship as it is about corruption and despair. "Yale is the first place Alex is free to open herself to connection," Bardugo says. "She does it tentatively, she does it warily, but she does form these attachments. She is somebody who is hungry to connect the way most people are, but has been damaged by her attempts to connect previously. The real chance she's been given here is to have allies, and she does. And that's how she's able to succeed."
"There's this incantation you put on the page that suddenly brought all of these people into your world."
That’s why the book is dedicated to Barudgo’s college roommates, for the many rescues: "Because that is what we did," she says. "We didn't really know it— we didn't have language for what we were doing — but that is what we did. We held each other up."
These days, Bardugo tries to avoid Twitter as much as she can, though she admits that initially she was too curious about the reaction to Ninth House to stay away. She quickly discovered that it was "either a five-star or a one-star. But you know, I feel kind of okay about that," she says. In this case, the good reviews outweigh the bad ones. Finding people who relate deeply to Ninth House is more important to her than being reminded that, inevitably, there are those it doesn’t work for.
And when the book does find its readers, it feels like magic every time, Bardugo says. She doesn’t think about a potential public when she writes (“It will paralyze me”); she tries to enjoy the story for its own sake, letting it unfold and allowing it to show her what she needs to say.
So when those private hours finally become public and someone says, you must have written this for me, it "really makes you feel that you have, in fact, uncovered a magic spell," Bardudo says. "There's this incantation you put on the page that suddenly brought all of these people into your world. It's a secret power you didn't know you had."
Bardugo laughs. She recognizes this narrative—she’s written it herself once or twice. “In that way, it's a very YA story.”
9:00 AM EDT, SEPTEMBER 28, 2017
Interview: Leigh Bardugo talks telling tales of tales in ‘The Language of Thorns’
BY MICHAL SCHICK
Author Leigh Bardugo speaks to Hypable about her beautiful new short story collection, The Language of Thorns.
Drawing from the Bardugo’s sumptuous Grishaverse — the Shadow and Bone trilogy, Six of Crows duology, and the forthcoming King of Scars — The Language of Thorns pulls readers into the fabric of her invented world. With new stories and familiar tales, this new collection will intrigue, awe, frighten, and inspire both stalwart fans and new readers looking for a heady spoonful of fantasy.
Interview with Leigh Bardugo
How did The Language of Thorns come about?
I guess it really started way back when we were promoting Shadow and Bone. I was lucky enough to get asked to write a short story for Tor.com, and instead of writing a prequel or a companion story, I decided to do a fairytale that would be the kind of thing my characters had heard growing up.
So that was really where the first Grishaverse folktale began, and it was inspired by Hansel and Gretel, because that was probably the story I was most disturbed by as a kid! [laughs] And not because of the cannibal witch, but because I always thought it was really weird that they went back to their dad at the end of the story, who had let them be lured into the woods not once, but twice.
Yeah, I read “The Witch of Duva” last night–
I hope you enjoyed the gingerbread holocaust!
I wasn’t expecting that to happen! So aside from existing in-world, do the stories in The Language of Thorns weave into the Grishaverse in any other ways?
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The stories are really sperate from the Grisha world, and you don’t need to have read any of the Grisha books to read them. That said, in one of the new stories there is a cameo from a character in the Grisha world, and you’ll recognize the countries that they’re set in, and probably some of the things about the culture. I mean, the stories that we tell and that we choose to tell, the way that we define heroism, the way that we talk about love, the way that we talk about moral good, really is, I think, shown in these kinds of stories that we tell children.
And admittedly, these are much darker than what you would ordinarily tell children!
Well, Russian-analog children. Their tolerance might be higher!
Russian-analog, but also, there’s a story Fjerda, a story from Kerch, a story from Novyi Zem. So you’re going to see different corners of the Grisha world, and different ways of thinking.
So what was it like shifting from novels to the very different format of the folktale?
It’s funny, over the course of writing the Shadow and Bone trilogy, I was writing these folktales. I wrote one for each of the books, “The Witch of Duva,” “The Too-Clever Fox,” and “Little Knife,” and then there are three new stories in the new book.
But I’ve also contributed to a couple of anthologies, and I have to say, I find writing short stories incredibly challenging. I think it flexes a very different muscle than writing novels does, but I also feel like — I mean, maybe I’m deluding myself! — but I feel like I improved as a writer because of these short stories. I think it forces you to think in very short, very specific terms, and that you’re really working at the sentence level. So I think it changed the way that I thought about my own prose.
I think Megan Whalen Turner once described short stories as a little present from your muse.
I think my muse is maybe a little stingy! Like, my muse didn’t get the memo that she was my Secret Santa, because I find the short stories don’t really arrive in that way. But I will say that the process is very different too. When I write novels, I outline them extensively.
When I write short stories, I really sit down and I tell them to myself. Sometimes it’s when I’m driving, sometimes it’s in my bathtub… but it’s really the act of immersing myself into that storyteller voice, and finding the story that way.
There’s an omnicience to fairytales. You have the sense that these stories have been told many, many times. And the presence of the narrator is, in some ways, closer to [an] old-school fantasy voice. And I think you can see it actually in the prologue and epilogue that are in each of the Shadow and Bone books, so I think that voice is there, but that’s definitely what I’m trying to access. And also, that narrator carries different biases depending on the story that they’re telling.
Did you do any research into the folktales and stories of the cultures analagous to those in the Grisha world?
For me, those cultures are not direct analogues, they’ve always been points of departure. That said, I read a lot of fairytales, myth, local legends, and also I try very hard to think about things like food. Even the way people relate to their geography, the way they relate to their religion. That is present in these stories, even in very small details. And again, because they’re short stories, you have less space to build a world in, and I don’t want you to have to pick up Six of Crows to understand Fjerda, or to understand Kerch. I want you to be able to start the first page of this story and understand where you are and what’s important in this world.
Was there a story that was particularly challenging for you to write?
Yes! There is a story called “When Water Sang Fire” that I think I can best describe as my sea-witch origin story. There’s Hans Christian Anderson, but there’s definitely some Ursula in there too. It’s the longest of the stories, and I think in some ways it really wanted to be a book or a novella, and so I really had to shape it and re-shape it to get it where I wanted it to be.
Whip that story into shape!
Yup.
Would you call “When Water Sang Fire” the centerpiece story The Language of Thorns? Is there one?
Well, the book opens with a story called “Ayama and the Thorn Wood” which is a kind of mishmash of Beauty and the Beast and A Thousand and One Nights, and Aridne and the Minataur, and it’s really very much about stories themselves, and the idea of what truths are found in that. So I think that that, in some ways sets the stage for the rest of the book.
I was trying to think of other writers who are able to publish a book of in-world short stories like The Language of Thorns, and I came up with J.K. Rowling, and that was it. So you’re in pretty vaunted company now!
[Laughs] I mean, it’s not like she’s sending me an invitation to her castle to hang out!
Yet!
I’m surprised that there aren’t more people who have done this. I suspect their must be, and I’m just not thinking of them. I mean, even when you’re reading fantasy — you mentioned Megan Whalen Turner, I’m thinking specifically of [the Queen’s Thief…] there are multiple levels of story within the stories we read. There’s the story that you’re reading on the page, then there are the stories that the characters tell each other about themselves, and then there’s another layer of story in terms of what they’ve internalized — whether that’s stories that are religious parables or myths of heroes that they grew up with.
So those things are already built into these books. And I think that they really sort of speak to the question of truth, and what the charachters believe is real and what isn’t real. I mean, that’s something that you see opperating with the Tower of Joy story in Game of Thrones. And what is real about their world, and what is real about the morality of their world, I think you see that more in something like the Attolia books.
So I may have pulled them out, but I feel like that’s always present in fantasy.
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Author Leigh Bardugo on Exploring the Dark Side of Fairy Tales in The Language of Thorns
Happily ever afters aren't all they're cracked up to be.
by ELIZA THOMPSON
SEP 26, 2017
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Since Shadow and Bone debuted in 2012, author Leigh Bardugo has been playing with fairy tale and fantasy tropes in all of the books set in her Grishaverse world. Her new book The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic takes this project even further with a collection of short stories set in fictional countries like Ravka and Kerch, accompanied by beautiful illustrations done by artist Sara Kipin. These stories are meant to be read as folklore that the characters in Leigh's other books would have heard as children, but they have more in common with Game of Thrones than Disney — the gorgeous prince is never as nice as you think he is, the doting father isn't as trustworthy as you want him to be. Here, Leigh talks about the inspiration for The Language of Thorns, her future plans for the Grishaverse, and what to expect from her upcoming book Ninth House.
YOU MENTIONED IN THIS BOOK'S AUTHOR'S NOTE THAT YOU’RE INTERESTED IN THE SAFE SPACES OF FAIRY TALES THAT ACTUALLY AREN’T SO SAFE, LIKE THE DAD IN HANSEL AND GRETEL WHO'S ACTUALLY A TERRIBLE PARENT. CAN YOU TALK A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT THAT?
Even as kids we have a real sense of the peril that exists in the places where we’re supposed to feel most at ease. We find that with the fact that the kids return to their father who has put them in such a vulnerable position, who has literally risked their lives twice. The narration of these stories wants us to lay the blame at the door of the stepmother, but anybody with a sense of self-preservation would understand that there is a great threat here — namely somebody who cares so little for his children or has so little spine that he’s willing to send them into the woods. We see that also in these situations where a girl will be elevated out of her class by beauty, usually by a prince who has fallen in love with her at first sight, which again, an alarm bell tends to ring that maybe this person is not the most steady soul and maybe isn’t the person who you would necessarily want to spend your life with, even if you shared a magical dance or if you accomplished a set of tasks that her or his parents set for you. These are all things that we’re supposed to simply accept or skim over as part of the experience of wish fulfillment in a fairy tale, but I think they leave us with a sense of discomfort and that’s what I wanted to explore in The Language of Thorns.
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Leigh Bardugo Interview
Author Leigh Bardugo.
MACMILLAN
HOW DO THESE STORIES FIT INTO THE REST OF THE GRISHAVERSE? ARE THEY KINDS OF STORIES THE CHARACTERS IN SIX OF CROWS HAVE HEARD GROWING UP?
Yes, that’s exactly what they are. These are stories that are meant to serve as part of the mythology and folklore of the world. The stories we tell each other and the stories we tell about heroism, about magic, about faith — those things say a lot about who we are and the kind of lessons that we wanna convey to our children. But I hope they also connect to our world too in some of the themes and in some of the ways they play with fear and magic and beauty.
I THINK THEY DEFINITELY DO — I COULDN'T STOP THINKING ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE WHEN I WAS READING "LITTLE KNIFE."
I didn’t set out with an agenda when I wrote the stories, but I don’t think that you can engage with fairy tales or folklore without finding certain things keep cropping up. Those things are very uncomfortable to read as a woman because they’re so often about the evils of women who have aged, who are ugly, who live alone. That is the nature of being a witch, right? And as somebody who has aged, who may not fit the standard of beauty, who very deliberately lives alone, the knowledge that I’m exactly the monster that a lot of fairy tales point to was something that I wanted to keep playing with again and again in these stories.
DO YOU HAVE ANY FURTHER PLANS TO DO MORE THINGS WITHIN THE GRISHAVERSE?
I can’t be specific but there’s much more to come. It’s a world I never really expected to expand beyond the borders of the first book or the first trilogy, but the more I travel in it the more I find there is to explore. There are a lot of places to visit and I tend to finish my books with a lot of doors open because I always want to be able to come back and pick up where I left off. I’ve been lucky in that there have been enough readers who have been willing to go on that journey with me that I actually get to keep coming back.
WHAT CAN YOU SAY ABOUT YOUR NEXT BOOK, NINTH HOUSE?
Ninth House is my first book for adults. It’s a dark fantasy that’s set at Yale among the secret societies, and it focuses on a girl who believes that a murder that took place on campus is deeply tied to the occult practices of these societies. So you know — murder, mayhem, preppies, the usual.
AND MAYBE STILL SOME MAGIC, IF THERE ARE OCCULT PRACTICES INVOLVED.
Plenty of magic! I’m not interested in a world without magic. This just happens to be particularly dark magic. I’m working on it right now and it’s been really fun to play with some of the history of New Haven and also to plan some new magical systems and mythology.
CONNECTICUT’S SUPPOSED TO BE VERY HAUNTED.
If Connecticut is haunted then New Haven is the weirdest of the towns that is haunted. You scratch the surface on that town and it is full of the macabre and the strange and the wonderful. It is a complex and messy city, and I have to say I feel like one of the joys of working on this book has been learning how much I didn’t know about a city that I spent so much time in. If it’s ghosts, it’s in Connecticut.
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Bardugo, Leigh DEMON IN THE WOOD Roaring Brook Press (Teen None) $19.99 9, 27 ISBN: 978-1-250-62464-2
A villain-origin prequel to Shadow and Bone (2012), adapted from "The Demon in the Wood: A Darkling Prequel Story" (2015).
Aleksandr, the boy who will grow up to be the Darkling, and his mother are Grisha--humans who practice magic, or "small science." They're on the run from witch-hunting drüskelle, but they must also be wary of fellow Grisha, who don't always react well to the duo's shadow-summoning powers. The storyline is tightly focused on a short period of time in Aleksander's life. When his mother finds a Grisha camp with a strong leader, they see the chance to stay put through the winter. There, Aleksandr befriends a girl named Annika when he helps her defend her "otkazat'sya" (non-Grisha) little sister from bullies, and he has a glimpse of what it would be like for outsiders to band together. Readers see the birth of Aleksander's ambitions--his craving for safety, stability, a home for his people. They also see the harsh experiences--from his mother's pragmatic and brutal teachings to betrayals--that shaped him. The graphic novel is calibrated for heartbreak, both in its tragic content and for Grishaverse readers seeing Aleksander's innocence while knowing where his story leads. Attractive, full-color art emphasizes characters' expressive faces, and the format is welcoming to Darkling fans coming to the series from the Netflix show (Aleksandr resembles the actor who plays the Darkling, and the book has the general aesthetic of the show). Characters are depicted with pale skin.
A poignant, humanizing backstory for the antagonist of this beloved, long-running series. (Graphic fantasy. 12-18)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
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"Bardugo, Leigh: DEMON IN THE WOOD." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Aug. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A711906685/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8cc434e8. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Leigh Bardugo. Flatiron, $29.99 (496p) ISBN 978-1-250-31310-2
Bestseller Bardugo, best known for her YA Grishaverse novels, returns to the more adult struggles of Alex Stern, low-level LA. drug dealer turned Yale scholarship student thanks to her ability to see and corral ghosts ("Grays"), in this thrilling sequel to 2()19's Ninth House. Now employed as a Virgil by Lethe House, the Yale body that oversees the magical rituals of the campus's many secret societies, Alex is pulled in several directions as she tries to fill the role left empty when her upperclassman mentor, Darlington, was sent to Hell by a diabolical dean. Ignoring her patrons' instructions to move on, she persists in digging into the secrets of Lethe's past, searching for a way to open a portal and bring Darlington back. Alex's own past will not stay hidden either; her LA. supplier, Eitan Harel, having learned of her ability, comes calling with jobs tor her, including intimidating a strangely unaging former Yalie. Bardugo surrounds Alex with fascinating supporting players, among them a damaged New Haven cop and a naive roommate excited by the lure of the supernatural, while keeping the story's drive firmly in Alex's grip for another scrappy underdog tale. The taut plot, often grisly magic, lavish scene-serting, and wry humor combine to make this just as un-putdownable as the first installment. Readers will be wowed. (Jan.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"Hell Bent." Publishers Weekly, vol. 269, no. 45, 31 Oct. 2022, p. 36. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A726954271/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=0016cde8. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Hell Bent. By Leigh Bardugo. Jan. 2023.496p. Flatiron, $29.99 (9781250313102).
Alex Stern returns for her second year of college as a representative of Lethe House, the body tasked with keeping the other secret societies at Yale in line. In the continued absence of her mentor, Daniel Arlington (aka Darlington), Alex now serves as Lethe's first in command. Darlington is trapped in hell, and against all advice and common sense, Alex and her allies--a reluctant police detecdve, a Skull and Bones bro, Lethe's researcher, and Alex's roommate--set out to retrieve him. As in Ninth House (2019), Bardugo doesn't flinch from the dark sides of magic and human nature: everything requires sacrifice and everything has a price. Readers will be swept along as the group unravels an intricate puzzle to discover the location of the mysterious Gauntlet, which will open a doorway to hell. The problematic history of Yale and New Haven provides context for many of the clues, while also introducing additional threats. Even if Alex and her team do somehow manage to get to hell and find Darlington, how will they ever make it back unscathed? This portrait of a survivor's dogged determination to accomplish her goal will appeal to readers of dark academia, urban fantasy, and horror.--Anna Mickelsen
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Though the author has said the book isn't for teens, adult and teen readers alike will flock to the sequel to 2019's Ninth House.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
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Mickelsen, Anna. "Hell Bent." Booklist, vol. 119, no. 5-6, 1 Nov. 2022, p. 40. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A727772487/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=107384cf. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh HELL BENT Flatiron Books (Fiction None) $29.99 1, 10 ISBN: 978-1-250-31310-2
A Yale sophomore fights for her life as she balances academics with supernatural extracurriculars in this smart fantasy thriller, the second in a series.
Galaxy "Alex" Stern is a member of Lethe House, the ninth of Yale's secret societies. And not just any member--she's Virgil, the officer who conducts the society's rituals. In the world of Bardugo's Alex Stern series, Yale's secret societies command not just powerful social networks, but actual magic; it's Lethe's job to keep that magic in control. Alex is new to the role. She had to take over in a hurry after the previous Virgil, Darlington, her mentor and love interest, disappeared in a cliffhanger at the end of the first book. He appears to be in hell, but is he stuck there for good? Alex and Pamela Dawes--Lethe's Oculus, or archivist/administrator--have found a reference to a pathway called a Gauntlet that can open a portal to hell, but can they find the Gauntlet itself? And what about the four murderers the Gauntlet ritual requires? Meanwhile, Alex's past as a small-time drug dealer is catching up with her, adding gritty street crime to the demonic white-collar evil the Yale crowd tends to prefer. The plot is relentless and clever, and the writing is vivid, intelligent, and funny at just the right moments, but best of all are the complex characters, such as the four murderers, each with a backstory that makes it possible for the reader to trust them to enter hell and have the strength to leave again. Like the first book, this one ends with a cliffhanger.
Well-drawn characters introduce the criminal underworld to the occult kind in a breathless and compelling plot.
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"Bardugo, Leigh: HELL BENT." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Dec. 2022, p. NA. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A729072648/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=8544517f. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh WONDER WOMAN Random House (Children's Fiction) $18.99 8, 29 ISBN: 978-0-399-54973-1
DC Comics opens its new line of media tie-in novels with this Wonder Woman origin story.Bardugo introduces readers to Wonder Woman with two alternating perspectives: Diana, princess of Themyscira, and Alia, a 17-year-old New Yorker. While most Amazons are women warriors rewarded with new lives after death, Diana alone is untested, molded from clay, eager to prove herself worthy. Diana's rescue of Alia from a shipwreck forces the princess into exile in order to prevent a foreordained global catastrophe. Alia wonders if her unusually dressed, oddly naive rescuer is in a cult. Nerdy, orphaned, biracial, and identifying as black, Alia is awkward and mostly friendless despite her family's massive wealth. Rescued from disaster by this bronze-skinned white girl who looks "like a supermodel who moonlighted as a cage fighter," Alia learns her very existence might cause the deaths of millions. With the help of her brother and their two best friends (snarky Brazilian Theo and Indian Nim, who's queer, fat, fashionable, and fabulous), Alia accompanies Diana on a quest to end the cycle of death. This will absolutely satisfy pre-existing fans of Wonder Woman, but it also readily stands alone for non-superhero fans (although with the first live-action Wonder Woman film opening two months before the novel's launch, it's likely to contribute to a new fan base for Diana). Cinematic battles and a race against time keep the excitement high, but the focus on girls looking out for each other is what makes this tie-in shine. Crossed fingers for a sequel. (Superhero fantasy. 12-16)
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"Bardugo, Leigh: WONDER WOMAN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A493329151/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d4bb0d1e. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Wonder Woman: Warbringer. By Leigh Bardugo. Aug. 2017. 384p. Random, $18.99 (9780399549731); lib. ed., $21.99 (9780399549748); e-book, $18.99 (9780399549755). Gr. 9-12.
Wonder Woman's backstory is fairly well-known--Amazon princess, isolated island populated only by women, defender of truth and justice, snappy golden lasso, etc.--but Bardugo breathes zippy new life into the story with a twisty plot, whip-smart characters, and her trademark masterful writing. Diana is eager to prove her valor to the other Amazons on Themyscira, but her chosen act of heroism--rescuing teenage Alia from a shipwreck outside the boundary waters of the island--wreaks havoc on the island's delicate balance. Of course, that's not all: Alia is a "warbringer," and her mere existence will spark global war unless Diana can intervene. Seamlessly integrating classic Wonder Woman lore with her own updated take, Bardugo fleshes out Diana's backstory and the mythology of Themyscira, adds in sly commentary on feminism and equality, and leavens the package with wry comedy--Diana's dour obliviousness to contemporary culture will make readers guffaw. This will certainly please seasoned fans of Wonder Woman, but with a cinematic plot and a diverse cast of thoughtfully well-rounded characters, don't be surprised if it garners wider appeal, too.--Sarah Hunter
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Combine best-selling, acclaimed Bardugo with one of this summer's most hotly anticipated movies, and you've got a recipe for a blockbuster on your hands.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 American Library Association
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Hunter, Sarah. "Wonder Woman: Warbringer." Booklist, vol. 113, no. 19-20, June 2017, p. 101. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A498582847/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=5843c3e5. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh. Wonder Woman: Warbringer: DC Icons, Book 1. Penguin Random House, 2017. 384p. $18.99. 9780-399-54973-1.
Longing to prove herself to her sisters, Diana competes against them in the Nemeseian Games. The stakes are high, and Diana knows that losing is not an option. During the footrace, however, Diana throws her lead to rashly rescue a mortal girl from drowning in the water between Themyscira and the World of Men. It is discovered, however, that Alia is no ordinary girl and has secrets of her own. She is a Warbringer, a direct descendant of Helen of Troy. By saving Alia, Diana not only risks exile from her own land, but the consequences of this rescue ripple through the whole world. Diana's curiosity and insubordinate behavior ultimately creates the potential for Amazonian doom. Diana and Alia find themselves in a conflict that crosses both of their universes. The young women will have to work together to save the ones they love from complete devastation.
Diana is Wonder Woman, but she is also a relatable young woman who must learn to work with another young woman to save the ones they love. In this long-anticipated novel, Bardugo produces a mesmerizing tale of a young woman's journey to self-discovery. The first in a four-volume DC Icons series, Wonder Woman: Warbringer debuts in a powerful way. Readers new to this legendary heroine will enjoy Bardugo's introduction, while fans of the famous character will love this coming-of-age story of Diana's adolescence. All readers will definitely be delighted by Bardugo's cinematic delivery and long for more stories about this epic, ass-kicking heroine.--Cyndi Fenske.
(a) Highlighted Reviews Graphic Novel Format
(G) Graphic Novel Format
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Fenske, Cyndi. "Bardugo, Leigh. Wonder Woman: Warbringer: DC Icons, Book 1." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 40, no. 3, Aug. 2017, p. 69. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A502000839/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e2f5f10e. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh THE LANGUAGE OF THORNS Imprint (Children's Fiction) $18.99 9, 26 ISBN: 978-1-250-12252-0
Six reimagined fairy tales set in the Grishaverse. Bardugo returns to the setting of Shadow and Bone (2012) with both original tales and familiar ones retold. Three are set in the Russia-like Ravka, including "The Witch of Duva." This "Hansel and Gretel" variant plays on stereotypes about villainy held by protagonist Nadya. (It also replaces candy with mouthwatering meals: "crispy roast goose," "butter-soaked blini," "black bread spread with soft cheese," "hot tea laced with sugar," "sweet rolls with prune jam.") From the island nation of Kerch, there's "The Soldier Prince," a retelling of The Nutcracker that raises questions about the selfhood of magical creatures. The Fjerdan "When Water Sang Fire" provides a villain origin story for "The Little Mermaid" that owes far more to Disney than to Hans Christian Andersen; it's nevertheless gorgeously otherworldly. Only the Ravkan stories offer substantial local flavor, though Zemeni Ayama is brown-skinned while the Fjerdan mermaids are fair. Kipin's two-color illustrated borders build cumulatively and fascinatingly, culminating in a double-page spread for each story. The more stylized illustrations, such as the thorns and labyrinth building slowly around the "Beauty and the Beast" variant "Ayama and the Thorn Wood," are the most successful; depictions of people are a little cutesy for the eerie prose. Any lover of retellings or original fairy tales will enjoy these offerings, whether they're new to Bardugo's worlds or are established fans. (Fantasy. 12-16)
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"Bardugo, Leigh: THE LANGUAGE OF THORNS." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A502192351/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=43d02d98. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic.
By Leigh Bardugo. Illus. by Sarah Kipin.
Sept. 2017. 304p. Macmillan/Imprint, $18.99 (9781250122520). Gr. 9-12.
With this lushly designed and wonderfully rendered offering, Bardugo (Six of Crows, 2015) returns to her Grishaverse with a collection of six stories. In an ending note, Bardugo mentions that her intention was to craft stories her characters might have heard as children, and indeed, no knowledge of her previous works is necessary for enjoying this. The stories are framed as coming from four of her Grishaverse nations--three from Ravka and one each from Kerch, Fjerda, and Novyi Zem--and flavors and morals change from culture to fictional culture. At their heart, these are tales built from the eeriest elements of fairy tales we know. Though readers may recognize certain components--a girl with a wolfskin cape, a house that smells like gingerbread, a mermaid with a silver voice--the stories here are entirely, luminously new. Bardugo doesn't twist familiar tales so much as rip them open, and the magic of the collection is enhanced by Kipin's otherworldly artwork: borders that grow ominously longer and more detailed with each page, and culminate in a final double-page spread for each story. Bardugo may be best known for her exemplary world building, but here more than anything, it is her language, lovely and unsettling, that is on display, as well as the accompanying characters who, like the stories themselves, are never what they seem.--Maggie Reagan
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Bardugo's already got two acclaimed, best-selling Grishaverse series under her belt, and this release in the same world isn't likely to slow the momentum.
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Reagan, Maggie. "The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic." Booklist, vol. 114, no. 2, 15 Sept. 2017, p. 51. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A507359958/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=26f2760f. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh. The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic. Illus. by Sara Kipin. Imprint/Macmillan, September 2017. 288p. $18.99. 978-1-25012252-0.
A plain girl tells stories to a monstrous prince in a wondrous forest. A clever fox with a tattered coat tries to save his home from a vicious hunter. Banished from her own home, a girl must live in the woods with a witch until winter ends and she can confront her stepmother. A poor wandering Tidemaker asks the river for help in winning the hand of Duke's unnaturally beautiful daughter. A nutcracker soldier learns what it is to desire and contests the nature of reality with his princess. The fate of two realms hinges on a greedy prince and a mermaid song. Welcome to the folktales of the Grishaverse.
The first thing to know about The Language of Thorns is that it is beautiful--beautiful imagery conceived from precise, beautiful prose; beautiful cover image and interior illustrations that creep across each page toward a beautiful consummation; beautiful lands inhabited by beautiful hearts. The second thing to know is that beautiful hearts rarely escape unscathed. Taking place in the world of her three Grishaverse novels, Bardugo has kindled from the ashes of folk tales a twisted sextet of short stories taking place across four lands. Some are derived from familiar stories, some entirely new, all dark, some hopeful. All are rewarding examinations of beauty, trust, greed, and human nature. Readers familiar with the setting will recognize places if not names; new readers face no barriers but will likely be drawn to the existing novels for more. --Lisa Martincik.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2018 E L Kurdyla Publishing LLC
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Martincik, Lisa. "Bardugo, Leigh. The Language of Thorns: Midnight Tales and Dangerous Magic." Voice of Youth Advocates, vol. 41, no. 1, Apr. 2018, p. 68. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A536746187/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=1507bed4. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
King of Scars
Leigh Bardugo. Imprint, $19.99 (528p) ISBN 978-1-250-14228-3
In this sweeping dramatic fantasy, Bardugo returns to her Grishaverse and the events in both the Shadow and Bone trilogy and the Six of Crows duology. Young King Nikolai struggles to maintain order in the kingdom of Ravka following war against the malevolent Darkling. Nikolai's efforts are complicated by the nocturnal emergence of a demon residing within him, and only his trusted confidante Zoya can help him maintain control. Meanwhile, Grisha-turned-spy Nina, still mourning the death of her beloved Matthias, works in secret to protect Grisha fugitives while investigating strange occurrences in the countryside. When Nikolai and Zoya vanish during an attempt to rid the king of his demon, it's up to his closest friends to protect the country in his absence, little realizing that the chain of events might lead to the resurgence of a great evil. This duology opener strongly relies on at least a passing familiarity with the previous series, making it less than ideal for newcomers. But Bardugo's portrayal of flawed, mentally and physically scarred protagonists is sympathetic and insightful, while the strong mixture of political intrigue, worldbuilding, and fantastical elements helps to drive the various story lines. Ages 14-up. Agent: Joanna Volpe, New Leaf Literary. (Jan.)
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"King of Scars." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 4, 28 Jan. 2019, p. 99. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A572146047/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=bbcf0676. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
King of Scars.
By Leigh Bardugo.
2019.480p. Macmillan/Imprint, $19.99 (9781250142283). Gr. 9-12.
Though the nation of Ravka survived a brutal civil war, it was left ravaged and scarred, and no one knows this better than its king. Infected with traces of dark magic at the end of Ruin and Rising (2014), the concluding volume to Bardugo's first foray into the Grishaverse, Nikolai Lantsov weathers uncontrollable transformations in this duology starter, as he, charming king by day, becomes without warning a vicious beast in the night. With Ravka in desperate need of stabilization and delegations of princesses--potential brides-on their way, Nikolai and his Grisha general, the unshakable Zoya Nazyalensky, set off on a journey that, futile though it may be, takes them deep into the history of their country as they search for a cure. Meanwhile, in Fjerda, to the north, Grisha soldier Nina Zenik is on a mission of her own, one that's part spy assignment on Nikolais orders, part a deeply personal journey through grief. This is Bardugo's third series in the Grishaverse, and while it draws from both the Grisha trilogy and the Six of Crows duology, both Bardugo's skill and Nikolai's appeal are such that readers new to the world should have no problem joining in. Deadly clever political intrigue, heart-stopping adventure, memorable characters, and several understated, hinted-at romances (how will we wait?!) come together in one glorious, Slavic-folklore-infused package. Bardugo's star continues to rise.--Maggie Reagan
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Shadow and Bone (2012) was a New York Times bestseller; Six of Crows (2015) went nuclear. Batten down the hatches.
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Reagan, Maggie. "King of Scars." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 11, 1 Feb. 2019, p. 75. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A574056497/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7ec8e060. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
King of Scars
by Leigh Bardugo
Middle School, High School Imprint/Macmillan 514 pp.
1/19 978-1-250-14228-3 $19.99 e-book ed. 978-1-250-14227-6 $9.99
Two narratives run parallel in this volume set in Bardugo's Grishaverse (first introduced in Shadow and Bone, rev. 7/12). In one, Zoya, King Nikolai's beautiful and ruthless general, strives to keep the king's possession by, and transformation into, a horrible winged monster a secret, but the beast (a remnant of a powerful Grisha they thought they'd killed) is getting stronger. In the other narrative, a Grisha named Nina is working undercover in magic-intolerant Fjerda, trying to smuggle other Grisha to safety. The story lines themselves don't intersect, but the political forces underlying them seem poised to clash, as fantasy versions of various cultures (Russian, Japanese, vaguely Nordic) head toward war. The characters of Zoya and Nikolai both sparkle with wit, and their pointed banter illuminates a brilliant, potentially romantic relationship with a seemingly inevitable star-crossed trajectory. Meanwhile, Nina's story has its own hint of romance: with Hanne, daughter of Nina's worst enemy, whom Nina helps to learn to control her hidden Grisha talent. The two story lines compete so strongly in interest that, when the narrative focus shifts, the disappointment of leaving behind the high-stakes action in one plot line is more than compensated for by the resumption of compelling drama in the other. ANITA L. BURKAM
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Sources, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
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Burkam, Anita L. "King of Scars." The Horn Book Magazine, vol. 95, no. 4, July-Aug. 2019, p. 123. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A592556161/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b7bf6ebd. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh NINTH HOUSE Flatiron Books (Adult Fiction) $27.99 10, 1 ISBN: 978-1-250-31307-2
Yale's secret societies hide a supernatural secret in this fantasy/murder mystery/school story.
Most Yale students get admitted through some combination of impressive academics, athletics, extracurriculars, family connections, and donations, or perhaps bribing the right coach. Not Galaxy "Alex" Stern. The protagonist of Bardugo's (King of Scars, 2019, etc.) first novel for adults, a high school dropout and low-level drug dealer, Alex got in because she can see dead people. A Yale dean who's a member of Lethe, one of the college's famously mysterious secret societies, offers Alex a free ride if she will use her spook-spotting abilities to help Lethe with its mission: overseeing the other secret societies' occult rituals. In Bardugo's universe, the "Ancient Eight" secret societies (Lethe is the eponymous Ninth House) are not just old boys' breeding grounds for the CIA, CEOs, Supreme Court justices, and so on, as they are in ours; they're wielders of actual magic. Skull and Bones performs prognostications by borrowing patients from the local hospital, cutting them open, and examining their entrails. St. Elmo's specializes in weather magic, useful for commodities traders; Aurelian, in unbreakable contracts; Manuscript goes in for glamours, or "illusions and lies," helpful to politicians and movie stars alike. And all these rituals attract ghosts. It's Alex's job to keep the supernatural forces from embarrassing the magical elite by releasing chaos into the community (all while trying desperately to keep her grades up). "Dealing with ghosts was like riding the subway: Do not make eye contact. Do not smile. Do not engage. Otherwise, you never know what might follow you home." A townie's murder sets in motion a taut plot full of drug deals, drunken assaults, corruption, and cover-ups. Loyalties stretch and snap. Under it all runs the deep, dark river of ambition and anxiety that at once powers and undermines the Yale experience. Alex may have more reason than most to feel like an imposter, but anyone who's spent time around the golden children of the Ivy League will likely recognize her self-doubt.
With an aura of both enchantment and authenticity, Bardugo's compulsively readable novel leaves a portal ajar for equally dazzling sequels.
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"Bardugo, Leigh: NINTH HOUSE." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A593064731/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=ecd115d6. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Ninth House. By Leigh Bardugo. Oct. 2019. 480p. Flatiron, $27.99 (9781250313072).
Bestselling YA author (and Yale alum) Bardugo's first adult novel follows Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a survivor who has won a place at Yale because of her ability to see ghosts. She's the newest initiate of Lethe, the ninth of the university's notorious secret societies, responsible for oversight whenever magical rituals are conducted by the other eight. As Lethe's new Dante, Alex is supposed to learn how all the societies operate, make sure they're not breaking the rules, keep ghosts from interrupting arcane rites, and take a full load of courses and keep up the appearance of being a normal first year student. Then Alex's mentor disappears and a townie with connections to several societies is murdered. Alex's violent past hasn't necessarily prepared her for the academic and arcane rigors of Yale, but she finds she is admirably suited to the role of tenacious detective as she works to understand how all the puzzle pieces fit together. This atmospheric contemporary novel steeped in the spirit of a mystical New Haven is part mystery, part story of a young woman finding purpose in a dark world, and is the first in a potential series.--Anna Mickelsen
HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Adults are just as enamored of Bardugo's YA novels as teens are, and many have been anxiously and curiously awaiting this one.
YA/M: Due to the explicit nature of the book, the author herself has advised caution among her teen readers. SM.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
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Mickelsen, Anna. "Ninth House." Booklist, vol. 115, no. 22, 1 Aug. 2019, pp. 46+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A598305263/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=d5c2ea6b. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Leigh Bardugo. Flatiron, $27.99 (480p)
ISBN 978-1-250-31307-2
Bardugo's excellent first fantasy novel for adults (following her highly regarded Six of Crows and Shadow and Bone YA series) introduces an antihero who is just the right person to take on rising dangers in an elitist society. Galaxy "Alex" Stern's early life was wrecked by her unusual ability to see "Grays"--earthbound ghosts--but that same ability gains her admission into one of the magic-based houses at Yale. As she struggles to adjust to college life, she's forced to confront evil powers swirling under the thin veneers of tradition and ritual. When a young woman is killed, Alex becomes determined to find the murderer, even if it means dodging attempts on her life and striking eldritch bargains. Alex is the story's gritty, rock-solid heart. While other characters refuse to admit what's happening, too insulated by their own privilege or distracted by banal needs such as funding, Bardugo gives Alex a thoroughly engaging mix of rough edge, courage, and cynicism, all of which are required to get things done. Much of the book's white-knuckled tension comes from the increasingly horrific flashbacks revealing Alex's past, which is still very present in her mind. Fantasy readers, particularly those who love ghosts, will hungrily devour this novel. Agent: Joanna Volpe, New Leaf Literary. (Oct.)
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"Ninth House." Publishers Weekly, vol. 266, no. 32, 12 Aug. 2019, p. 43. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A597198066/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e072a89f. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh WONDER WOMAN DC Ink (Young Adult Fiction) $16.99 1, 7 ISBN: 978-1-4012-8255-4
A graphic adaptation of Bardugo's (Ninth House, 2019, etc.) 2017 novel of the same name.
Diana was molded from clay by her mother, Hippolyta, and given life by the goddesses. Because she was made and did not earn her place in Themyscira, Diana is determined to prove herself to her mother and her fellow Amazons by winning the race to Bana-Mighdall. Midway through the race, Diana witnesses a ship exploding and sets aside her desire for victory to save a girl, Alia. When Alia's presence on the island wreaks havoc, Diana learns she is a Warbringer, cursed to bring death and destruction everywhere she goes. Diana and Alia flee Themyscira, return Alia to New York City and, with the help of Alia's brother and two of their friends, work to break the curse. The introduction of necessary background information doesn't always flow well with the conversation bubbles, and red-outlined text boxes showing Alia's thoughts feel insufficient for the introduction of a second narrator. Well-paced and funny, where this adaptation stands out is in the illustrations that show people of color in a nuanced way. The cast is diverse--Diana appears white, Alia and her brother are biracial (black and Greek), their two friends are cued as South Asian, fat, and queer and Afro-Latinx respectively. Readers need not have read any other Wonder Woman stories to enjoy this one.
Diana's lasso of truth shows this one is a winner. (Graphic novel. 13-17)
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"Bardugo, Leigh: WONDER WOMAN." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Nov. 2019. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A605549561/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=7796170c. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Wonder Woman: Warbringer (The Graphic Novel). By Leigh Bardugo and Louise Simonson. Illus. by Kit Seaton and Sara Woolley. Jan. 2020. 208p. DC, $16.99 (9781401282554). Gr. 9-12. 741.5.
In this graphic adaptation of Bardugo's Wonder Woman: Warbringer (2017), a pre-superhero Diana is waylaid during a race with her fellow Amazons, thanks to a ship exploding near her island and her compulsion to rescue Alia. Unbeknownst to Diana, Alia is a Warbringer, a descendant of Helen who brings about conflict wherever she goes. Relying on advice from an oracle, Diana leaves Themyscira to bring Alia to a spring that might purge her of her curse and end the threat forever. Unlike many typical superhero comics, Simonson's adaptation is text-heavy but remains entirely faithful to the original story. As a lifelong inhabitant of Themyscira, Diana gains insight into the racial and gender issues prevalent in human society, particularly among Alias diverse group of friends and family in New York. The illustrations are detailed and colored mostly in shades of blue with the occasional pop of red. Teens will likely appreciate seeing such an iconic character struggle with insecurity. With lots of Greek mythology peppered throughout the book, this should have wide appeal among a broad range of readers.--Suzanne Temple
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2020 American Library Association
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Temple, Suzanne. "Wonder Woman: Warbringer (The Graphic Novel)." Booklist, vol. 116, no. 9-10, 1 Jan. 2020, pp. 60+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A613202999/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=4f3e4834. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Bardugo, Leigh RULE OF WOLVES Imprint (Teen None) $22.99 3, 30 ISBN: 978-1-250-14230-6
Following King of Scars (2019), the world’s a powder keg of political hostilities and existential threats.
In a juggling act between viewpoint characters, readers follow far-ranging intrigues inside countries, between countries, and between individuals. King Nikolai faces imminent threats from Fjerda, rumors of his bastardy that threaten to dethrone him, complicated trade relations with both Zemeni and Kerch, and an engagement to Princess Ehri of Shu Han—despite her sister, Queen Makhi, having schemed to kill both of them. Zoya, Nikolai’s loyal general, is handed a series of nigh-impossible assignments, including some having to do with the Darkling. Meanwhile, deeply embedded Nina spies on Fjerda, working to undermine the rumors surrounding Nikolai’s parentage, uncover Fjerda’s military plans, manipulate their royals toward a more peaceful path, and secretly sway the population’s view of Grisha. And all over the world, a mysterious blight suddenly appears, destroying everything in its path. Sprinklings of recaps and lots of action help to prevent the massively intricate world from becoming overwhelming. Battles in particular shine, not just for their action, but for the questions they pose about the direction of warfare in an arms race. The multiethnic cast that includes queer characters and relationships showcases a White-passing biracial character grappling with identity and another character’s trans-coded journey. A big finish manages to tidy up almost all ends but still leaves space for more to come.
A wild ride both fantastical and grounded in nuance. (Orders of Grisha guide, map) (Fantasy. 14-adult)
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"Bardugo, Leigh: RULE OF WOLVES." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Mar. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A654727507/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=22454cee. Accessed 12 Dec. 2022.
Ninth House
by Leigh Bardugo
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Following a wildly successful career as a young adult author, reigning queen of the Grishaverse Leigh Bardugo makes her first (and long-awaited) foray into adult literature. Grim, deeply magical and unflinchingly violent, NINTH HOUSE is a perfect spooky read for grown-up Harry Potter fans who are aching for more.
It is always a shock when someone gains entry into an Ivy League institution, regardless of the hours of prep and determination it took to get there. But for Galaxy “Alex” Stern, the imposter syndrome is as real as it gets: she has no diploma, no GED and is a bit too familiar with the popular street drug fentanyl. Oh, and she was recently the sole survivor of a grisly multiple homicide. Not exactly Yale material, but Alex has a very special skill on her resume: she can see ghosts (Greys) without drinking a potent and dangerous elixir, and there is a super-secret society at the storied university that needs her. The catch? She must delve into a world very close to the Veil, populated by obscene violence, corrupt men with too much power, and her own worry that she might be crazy.
"Grim, deeply magical and unflinchingly violent, NINTH HOUSE is a perfect spooky read for grown-up Harry Potter fans who are aching for more."
Bardugo kicks off NINTH HOUSE with the bewitching idea that Yale’s secret societies are no longer just hazing one another and granting career-driven favors, but, rather, using dark magic to predict the stock market, see the future, and assist their powerful and well-known members in their own business endeavors. As a freshman granted a full ride, it is Alex’s job to join Lethe House, one of the nine campus societies that polices the others, make sure their forays into black magic go unnoticed, keep the Greys away and, of course, clean up the bodies...wait.
Even without her paranormal skill set, Alex is an immediately captivating character: born to a hippie mom, she shares almost nothing in common with her privileged, wealthy classmates and reveals her backstory slowly, cautiously, with the air of a person who has seen too much. Her mentor at Yale, Darlington, does what he can to tame his charge, but even he can see that Alex is not like any member of Lethe House before her. When Darlington disappears at the end of Alex’s first semester, she must brave the world of magic, murder and corruption alone --- and decide if she can stomach Lethe Houses’s darker proclivities in exchange for a promised future, or if she should return to the depths of poverty, trauma and hopelessness. When the body of one of New Haven’s poorest citizens is discovered, Alex is forced to confront this decision head-on, battling her own sense of self-preservation and the depths of her magic.
It goes without saying that NINTH HOUSE is a wickedly magical and fantastical story full of mystery and world-building, but in Bardugo’s skilled hands, it is so much more. Not once does she shy away from exposing the gap between Alex and her privileged peers, and in doing so, she forces her readers to confront their own privileges as well. For years, Yale’s magic practitioners have preyed upon the poor, forgotten and mentally ill --- but with Alex around, they can no longer act like their victims (sacrifices?) have no value outside of their magical offerings. Bardugo brilliantly unpacks the draw of corruption and the toxicity of wealth with a careful hand --- all without distracting from the plain fun spookiness of Alex’s world. Gentrification, misogyny and trauma are all placed under Bardugo’s magnifying glass, and the result is a poignant, thought-provoking combination of fantasy and real life that will appeal to readers of all kinds.
Bardugo is already well-known for her powerful world-building, and though NINTH HOUSE is set in a world familiar to ours (New Haven!), she still manages to imbue her setting with endless magic and sparkle. New Haven is a character in and of itself, and even as Alex endures such vicious acts as misogyny and trauma, so does New Haven endure gentrification and the loss of its citizens. The Yale campus, meanwhile, is equal parts inviting and threatening --- a Tim Burton-ified Hogwarts with endless potential for both power and devastation.
In case I have not made this clear, NINTH HOUSE is absolutely not for the faint of heart; this tome sits solidly in the world of the grimdark, and Bardugo depicts several scenes of violence, sexual assault and more --- but never gratuitously or recklessly. Every decision of hers serves the plot and her protagonist, though it is definitely a novel that requires a few, if not several, trigger warnings.
Combining a clever and steadfast protagonist with witchcraft and ghosts, and layering them into a world that is shockingly and brutally familiar to our own, NINTH HOUSE is a mystery-lover’s fantasy woven into a world full of crimes and harsh truths. I finished the book breathlessly with wide eyes and a level of focus that I usually only reserve for picking up broken glass --- even when it is difficult to read, it is impossible to pry your eyes from it. Whether you’ve read Bardugo’s YA books or not, her first adult novel is well worth your time and signifies a whole new level to her already ultra-talented mind. Ready or not, here comes Alex Stern. Is book two here yet?
Reviewed by Rebecca Munro on October 11, 2019