Ruin and Rising

Ruin and Rising is the third and final book in Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy of young adult fantasy adventure/romance novels. Ruin and Rising was originally published in 2014. Bardugo has written 12 novels as of 2021, many of which are set in the “GrishaVerse” world first portrayed in the novel Shadow and Bone. The Shadow and Bone trilogy, combined with Bardugo’s Six of Crows duology, has been adapted as a television miniseries. Before writing novels full-time, Bardugo worked as a journalist and makeup artist, and her debut adult novel, Ninth House, is set at her alma mater, Yale University. Bardugo draws inspiration for her trilogy from tsarist Russian settings and storylines.

Plot Summary

Ruin and Rising begins with Alina Starkov, the series protagonist and narrator, living in an underground city accessed by tunnels beneath her homeland of Ravka. Alina is a powerful Grisha (magician) who can summon light from the sun and stars and use it as a weapon. She is a counterpart to the Darkling, her nemesis who can summon and control darkness. Aided by shadow soldiers he has created, the Darkling has claimed the throne of Ravka, usurping the former king and queen. Alina wants to defeat the Darkling but is weakened underground by her distance from the sun and by the aftereffects of a battle with the Darkling at the end of the previous book in the series, Siege and Storm. The underground city is under the Apparat’s control, a religious leader who once served Ravka’s king and who now wants to enthrone Alina. Alina suspects that he would try and make her his puppet, and she distrusts him. Despite the inability to use her powers, Alina and the Darkling have a psychic connection that either of them can initiate due to the melding of their powers during their last battle.

With the help of the loyal Grisha who followed her underground and her childhood best friend, Mal, Alina regains her summoning powers and intimidates the Apparat into letting her and her companions go. The group makes its way to the surface, dodging tunnel collapses along the way. Once they emerge from the tunnels, Alina, Mal, and the Grisha try and find one of their allies, Nikolai Lantsov. Nikolai is the only surviving son of the Ravkan King and Queen, and he wants to reclaim the throne for his family. However, Alina can only follow a hunch about where to find Nikolai because he has gone into hiding after narrowly escaping an attack by the Darkling and ferrying his parents and Alina’s mentor, Baghra (the Darkling’s mother), to safety. After failing to find Nikolai, deserters from Ravka’s army attack the group and turn Alina in to the Darkling. Nikolai rescues Alina and her friends from the attack and whisks them to a hidden mountain fortress in one of his flying airships.

At the fortress, Alina reconnects with Baghra, who helps her continue developing her summoning power. Baghra also relates that her father was Morozova, a powerful sorcerer who made the amplifiers (which amplify a Grisha’s power) and experimented with creation and resurrection. Baghra can summon darkness, but her sister, whom their father resurrected after an accident, did not have any magical powers. After the former King of Ravka is accused of raping one of Alina’s friends, who served as a minor Grisha and used to be a servant to the King, Nikolai banishes his father and prepares to face the Darkling for the throne of Ravka. He implies to Alina that he would like to marry her after the war, although the two don’t have romantic feelings for each other. Alina, who has loved Mal for years, is uneasy about her decision. At the fortress, Mal admits that he has feelings for Alina as well, but he feels that he is unworthy of her. Alina, mindful of the political role she must play as a powerful Grisha, reluctantly agrees that she should consider marrying Nikolai. She continues contacting the Darkling with their psychic connection, trying to shake his confidence.

Alina and her companions prepare to leave the fortress. Nikolai and Alina plan to visit Ravka’s neighbor to the west, West Ravka, to bolster support for his claim to the throne. Nikolai will then take her to rejoin the others in the search for a third magical item that will amplify Alina’s summoning abilities (she has already claimed artifacts from the other two amplifiers in the previous books). The third amplifier is believed to be a firebird. However, before any of the friends can leave from the fortress, the Darkling unexpectedly attacks and transforms Nikolai into one of his shadow monsters. Baghra, furious at her son, uses her own darkness-summoning powers to dive off a cliff and take the shadow monsters with her, granting the others an opportunity to run. Alina, Mal, and the Grisha take an airship from the fortress and escape. Alina keeps the airship invisible to onlookers by bending the light that would normally reflect off of it. She sees Nikolai following them in his transformed shape, convincing her that there is enough of his humanity left in him that she might save him.

After landing near the mountainous border of Ravka with its southern neighbor, Shu Han, the group splits into two. Alina, Mal, and several Grisha head into the wilderness to look for the firebird. They encounter the bird after many days of searching, but Alina and Mal realize that it isn’t the third amplifier after all. Instead, Morozova put the power he would have put into the firebird into Baghra’s sister when he resurrected her, which means that she and her descendants are amplifiers. Mal is a descendent of Baghra’s sister and is the third amplifier. Alina is distraught because she has always had to kill the animal that was an amplifier to gain its power. Mal insists that she kill him when the time is right in order to defeat the Darkling, and Alina reluctantly agrees that if there is no other way, she will do it. The two give in to their romantic feelings for each other, kissing and cuddling during their return journey to their friends.

The group prepares for a climactic battle with the Darkling, who has razed the orphanage where Alina and Mal grew up, which was converted into a school to train Grisha children. The Darkling holds the children hostage as a way of luring Alina to meet him. Alina, Mal, and the Grisha face off against the Darkling in the Shadow Fold, an area of permanent darkness and monsters created by the Darkling many years ago. Alina uses the invisibility cloaking technique she used on the ship on herself and her soldiers, but the Darkling discovers her. Alina narrowly escapes him and then meets Mal in the darkness nearby. He forces her to kill him to release his power as an amplifier. Heartbroken, Alina becomes more powerful for a brief moment but quickly loses her summoning abilities permanently. Instead, the non-magical soldiers of Ravka’s army all gain the ability to summon light. Alina uses a Grisha dagger to kill the Darkling, destroying him, his army, and the Fold. Nikolai returns to his human form. In the aftermath of the battle, Alina’s Grisha bring Mal back to life. She again refuses Nikolai’s proposals of marriage and returns to her hometown with Mal, where they rebuild the orphanage and school, and the students are cared for and valued.

Ruin and Rising explores themes of loyalty, power, love, sacrifice, and inequality.