![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And Alina herself is glaringly one-note, with actor Jessie Mei Li delivering constant wide-eyed shock but little else. Shadow and Bone’s opulent settings and production design work against it, because the story isn’t rich enough to fill it. Its character-building is lackluster its worldbuilding is mostly incoherent, and its script careens from one-liner to one-liner without much substance in between - all while the weak writing torpedos the efforts of its talented cast.Ī frenetic, demanding action score accompanies nearly every minute of every episode, as if allowing us a moment’s silence might reveal that most of what’s happening onscreen is actually uneventful. Again and again, Shadow and Bone forces unearned story beats and melodrama. And it’s got plenty of sex, with an array of teens flirting and scheming their way across the realm.īut beyond the superficial, Shadow and Bone fails to deliver any of the charm and emotional engagement of a Game of Thrones (when that show was at its best), or even a Winx Saga (which is objectively terrible, but in an enjoyably ridiculous way). ![]() It’s got high-budget graphics and action sequences. It’s got a large and diverse ensemble cast, spread out over the world’s fictional topography - from barren battlefields to opulent cities modeled after places like Amsterdam, Vladivostok, and Moscow. It’s high fantasy, set in a totally different fictional world, like Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings. Superficially, Shadow and Bone offers a lot to satisfy former Game of Thrones fans. Suddenly, Alina is the key to bringing peace to the nation - so naturally, it puts a giant target on her head. In fact, her emergent power reveals her to be a fabled saint known as the “Sun Summoner,” the only person capable of offering safe passage through the Fold, a pitch-black, monster-filled sea of fog that has split Ravka into two halves. In the heat of battle, she discovers unexpectedly that she belongs to the Grisha - a group of humans with supernatural powers.Īlina’s long-dormant ability allows her to transmit powerful rays of sunlight, making her a vital and unique weapon. A typical Chosen One narrative, the story centers on a teenage orphan named Alina, who works as a mapmaker on the front lines for a perpetually war-torn country called Ravka. Out of all of these titles, Shadow and Bone feels the most like a would-be Game of Thrones successor. Thanks to a run of successful original series like The Umbrella Academy and The Witcher, Netflix has increasingly embraced fantasy audiences, showing a willingness to back high-budget series adaptations like The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and its popular update of Nickelodeon’s fairy fantasy Fate: The Winx Saga - which the network recently announced is its most-watched series of 2021 so far. It’s unsurprising that the end of Game of Thrones left a void in the fantasy landscape that many networks, including Netflix, have been vying to fill. But inevitably, what most viewers will be reminded of as they watch the eight-episode first season is Game of Thrones. One of the streaming network’s more anticipated recent releases, it’s an adaptation of the Grishaverse, a bestselling young adult fantasy series of novels by Leigh Bardugo based loosely on Tsarist Russia. The new Netflix series Shadow and Bone, which lumbers into the world on April 23, draws instant comparisons to the giant upon whose shoulders it stands. ![]()
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