🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

The world that Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li) inhabits in Shadow and Bone is full of magic, populated by characters who can manipulate the elements, conjuring sun, shadow, wind. It’s an intricate universe, with its own history, geography and political intrigue. If you’re captivated by it, you might want to spend more time there, with the books that served as inspiration for the series: Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse novels, which introduce Alina, her best friend Mal (Archie Renaux) and the powerful Darkling (Ben Barnes), and expand outward. Want to learn more about how Bardugo’s books inspired each season of the show? Read on to find out more about Shadow and Bone’s literary origins.

Is the Shadow and Bone series based on a book? 

Several, actually. It’s based on the world Bardugo created in several books: her original trilogy (Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising), its spin-off duology (Six of Crows and Crooked Kingdom) and its sequel duology (King of Scars and Rule of Wolves), as well as companion volumes The Language of Thorns, Demon in the Wood and The Lives of Saints. The first season of Shadow and Bone was based mainly on the eponymous first book in the Grishaverse, but also introduced characters from Six of Crows, such as the Crow gang of the city of Ketterdam as well as Nina (Danielle Galligan) and Matthias (Calahan Skogman).

What book is Shadow and Bone Season 2 based on?

It’s actually based on three of Bardugo’s novels. While the majority of the season takes inspiration from both Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising, by the time the finale rolls around you’ll also see something pulled from Crooked Kingdom.

🤐 SPOILER ALERT 🤐

BEWARE: THE REST OF THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS SPOILERS FROM SHADOW AND BONE SEASON 2.

Dávid Lukács/Netflix

What elements from Siege and Storm are in Season 2?

Shadow and Bone, meet the Sturmhond — he’s the mysterious (and notorious) privateer whose true (and surprising) identity is revealed later on in Season 2. There are a number of dual identities and hidden parentages in the Grishaverse, and it turns out that the Sturmhond is also known as Prince Nikolai Lantsov (Patrick Gibson), aka the younger prince of Ravka who ultimately installs Alina as the Grisha leader of the Second Army.

“Everybody's definitely made sure to honor the material there and stay really close to the characters that we all love in the books,” Gibson tells Tudum. But the best part of the show, he says, is “to see those little individual touches [from each actor] that really breathes life into them.”

What about Ruin and Rising? 

Throughout Season 2, Mal and Alina are on a quest to find Morozova’s amplifiers, mythic artifacts that can be used to increase the power of Grisha magic; this comes straight from the third book of the original trilogy. It’s also in the third book that we finally learn about Mal’s heritage: that he’s actually a direct descendant of Morozova, the legendary Grisha who created the amplifiers, and is himself the Firebird, the final amplifier. Ruin and Rising is also where Baghra (Zoë Wanamaker’s character in the show) teaches Alina how to use the Cut (aka summon her power to slice something in half — a very advanced Grisha move), and it’s the origin of the proposed union (or is it a political alliance?) between Alina and Nikolai. When the Alina of the books decides to step down as Second Army leader, the triumvirate is created to take her place. At the end of Season 2, Alina becomes part of the triumvirate.

Dávid Lukács/Netflix

Is Crooked Kingdom in Shadow and Bone Season 2? 

Why yes indeed. You know how at the end of the season, Inej (Amita Suman) split from the rest of the Crows and headed off to find the slaver who captured her and her brother as children? That comes from Crooked Kingdom.

“I think the thing that shocked me the most when reading the script was probably that [Inej] leaves by the end of the season. It’s kind of suggested at the end of Crooked Kingdom,” Suman tells Tudum. She wasn’t expecting to explore that part of her character’s story just yet. 

What other books did the end of Season 2 reference?

The Season 2 finale hints at the Ice Court heist from Six of Crows. In addition, the end of the season features Nikolai's discovery that some of the Darkling's magic still lives within him — an event that occurs in King of Scars.

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