Shadow And Bone, Netflix’s adaptation of Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishaverse” novels, has become one of the streaming site’s most anticipated upcoming shows. The series doesn’t come out till April 23, but fans of the novels can now have a sneak peek in the newly released teaser.
The teaser introduces heroine Alina Starkov (Jessie Mei Li), who discovers she has a mystical power that’ll become instrumental in helping her country. But there’s a lot going on, including Alina meeting General Kirigan (Ben Barnes), the Gisha leader who takes interest in her powers and will serve as a guide to her along the way. But in case you’re not familiar with the novels and have no idea what’s going on in the trailer, Li broke down the gist of what happens to her character in an interview about the trailer with IGN.
“Alina is a cartographer in the army and she then discovers that she has this mythical power to summon sunlight, which of course from the trailer you can see that the country of Ravco is split in two by this enormous expanse of darkness so it is then Alina’s responsibility to vanish the [Shadow] Fold with her newfound powers,” she explained.
As for General Kirigan, Barnes explained that Kirigan “has been hoping to be able to banish the Fold, and to be able to bring peace to the country, that is a very war-torn country.” Upon meeting Alina, he realizes that her powers combined with his own are what’s needed to combat evil.
Netflix also shared the official synopsis and it looks like the series is staying mostly loyal to the titular novel:
Based on Leigh Bardugo’s worldwide bestselling Grishaverse novels, Shadow and Bone finds us in a war-torn world where lowly soldier and orphan Alina Starkov 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. Shadow and Bone is a Netflix production from 21 Laps Entertainment, starring Jessie Mei Li (Alina Starkov), Archie Renaux (Malyen Oretsev), Freddy Carter (Kaz Brekker), Amita Suman (Inej), Kit Young (Jesper Fahey), and Ben Barnes (General Kirigan)
Bird Box and Arrival writer Eric Heisserer is the showrunner for the eight-episode series, so it seems to be in good hands.
19 Comments
So I am gonna watch this because this is like 100% my wife’s jam but I don’t know. This whole Victorian fantasy world thing is just getting overdone. This one looks less steampunky at least but it still has all the trappings of that sorta genre.
If a city doesn’t eat another city, I’m out.
It’s funny that is one of the movies I thought of when I saw this.
I listened to the audiobooks. They’re a mashup of fantasy and romance tropes. If that’s your thing, you’ll probably really like it! Personally, I found the ending a little unsatisfying, but that’s because the tropes didn’t really work for me. YMMV.
Agree with you about the original trilogy. The Six of Crows duology gets much better.
Good tip. I’ll check that out.
So… they’re just planning on mushing stuff from Six of Crows into the main story of the first trilogy? Sounds… messy. I guess it’s because Kaz and Nina are the breakaway fan favorite characters?
Also, it would have been great if they used the vaguely Eastern European inspired setting to do something other than the bland, RP accent that’s become de rigeur for fantasy, but oh well. I guess we get more British accented Russians, like on The Great and every adaptation of Anna Karenina.
I guess so, but I also feel like even if they put on accents, it’s still in English, not Russian or Polish or what have you. So it’s still primarily catering to Anglophone audiences, why dress it up? It would have been cool if they actually did it in Russian since they’re using the aesthetics of Imperial Russia, but they’re never going to do that. And since it’s fantasy, I don’t think it’s necessarily a big cultural woof.
I agree it’s probably a little tired for non English-from-England speakers though. I’m genuinely an RP English, Home Counties girl (sigh) so I don’t notice it as much I suppose.
I know they planned to do Russian/Ukranian accents on Chernobyl, and they said it got distracting and goofy really quickly so they just let everyone use their own accent.
I admit that having everyone in the cast attempt an Eastern European accent is probably a very bad idea. A friend of mine mentioned Elizabeth Olsen’s Sokovian accent as a counterexample. And given that nearly the entire cast here is English, I am fine with them all using their preferred delivery, so I retract my complaint.
I can’t be the only person who assumed the “Grishaverse” was a series of John Grisham adaptations in a shared universe.
You are not. I was waiting to see The Rainmaker team up with The Lincoln Lawyer to take down The Firm.
It turned out to be an interagency operation conducted between the remaining members of Treadstone, the IMF, and that dude from Sahara? Sure, I’d watch that on TNT at 4:30 on a Saturday.
so Olivia Munn was busy?Honestly thought it was her, with some really good de-aging sfx.
Roger Zelazny’s Jack of Shadows played with some of these concepts & was one of his most interesting novels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_of_Shadows
How are there so many SFF adaptations out there these days, and yet still no one has managed to adapt Zelazny?Although, given that when Amazon was reportedly pursuing an Amber series they were working with Robert Kirkman, maybe I should be grateful. He is definitely not who I would want for that project.
Yeah I don’t get it either. Does the CIA somehow still have the rights to Lord of Light? And the Chronicles of Amber would seem ideal for a cable miniseries or series, with a hopefully less hack-y showrunner.
A good Amber series would be amazing. Lord of Light… given their track record I doubt they care about cultural appropriation, but I don’t think even the CIA should try to adapt that one.
Would I be correct in assuming that once you are of child-rearing age, you’re out of the target market for this?