Shadow and Bone: A Searing Burst of Light
I ran into a problem pretty much right away when I sat down to take notes on the first episode – this show is not just a Shadow and Bone trilogy adaptation, but also the Six of Crows duology adaptation. I spent some time considering how I should approach this, and I’ve decided that I’m going to tackle the trilogy and duology separately. There’re two reasons for this: 1) This blog is about books and their adaptations and I strongly believe that each book should get its own review, and 2) I am a recent Shadow and Bone fan, as in my boyfriend bought me the first book for my birthday earlier this year and I haven’t read the Six of Crows duology yet. When I checked online to see what order I should read them in, everyone strongly recommended reading the trilogy first and the duology second. This does mean that there will be large parts of the episode I don’t talk about yet because I’m saving that for when I do the duology. However, I am planning on binge reading these books so it shouldn’t be too long before I write about the duology. Okay, let’s jump right into Shadow and Bone – A Searing Burst of Light.
Opening Scene
The Netflix show opens with a voiceover where Alina explains how she used to be afraid of the dark and then learned that the dark was an actual place. We see adult Alina drawing a map in a wagon of other cartographers. Voiceover-Alina explains that she’s never felt welcome where she lives, East Ravka, because she looks like her mother, who “looked like the enemy.” But Alina tells us that the real enemy is the Fold – a sea of darkness that bisects Ravka and is full of monsters. We then cut to Alina as a child.
This is very different from how the book starts, which begins with Alina’s childhood. (I’m starting to get the sense that every adaptation of a novel that starts with the main character as a child has to change the opening scene to show the adult version of the main character. It’s like they think we’ll turn away if we don’t see an attractive woman in the first ten seconds!)
But before we talk about the flashback scene, there are a few differences I want to talk about right off the bat. The most important being Alina’s race. In the book, Alina feels like an outsider mainly because she’s weak and plain, but in the T.V. show, she’s an outsider because she’s half-Shu and people are racist. As of right now, I like this change. It’s a nice break from the typical “oh woe is me because I’m not beautiful like the other girls” and gives Alina’s feelings of otherness some real depth. I also think that Netflix lucked out with how culturally well-timed this change is because anti-Asian hate is now more topical than ever. (With that in mind if you’re able, please consider donating to some charities or fundraisers that support and help Asian Americans. This article lists a number of ways you can donate.)
One minor change I noticed was in Alina’s skill as a cartographer. In the book Alina is not the best assistant mapmaker, that title is held by Alexei. In the show, Alina is shown expertly shading in a portion of her map while on a bumpy wagon. Alexei even asks Alina how she’s able to do that, thereby implying that she’s a better mapmaker than him. I know this change seems minor, but it’s emblematic of a theme I’ve seen in modern movies and shows that have a female hero. Basically, this theme seems to posit that the heroine has to be the best at almost everything. It’s not enough that Alina turns out to be the sun summoner, she also has to be an excellent mapmaker, and attractive, and charming. I’ll withhold further judgement for now because I’ve only seen the first episode, but I have a feeling this trend is going to continue.
Alina’s and Mal’s Childhood
The show then cuts to Alina as a child, recently orphaned and studying a map on the wall. This scene serves as a great vehicle for exposition because the audience, just like young Alina, needs some basic information. Like what is the Fold, why do people cross it, and why you can’t just go around. In the show, we then pretty quickly cut back to present-day Alina, but I want to stick with the glimpses of Alina’s childhood that we get throughout the show.
The opening scene of the book doesn’t give us a ton of information on what Alina and Mal were like as kids. We learn that they liked to run and hide to listen in on what the adults were saying and that they were utterly devoted to each other. In the show, Alina is very clearly seen as the leader of the two. She is ready to defend Mal with a knife when an older boy comes in to bully them, and Mal is seen as the one who runs and hides whenever there’s conflict. In the book, he’s described as shy, but he doesn’t come across as cowardly as he does in the show.
Side-note, young Alina is so cute that when I saw her with the knife I immediately thought of this meme.
The Army Camp
In the show, we see Alina arrive at the camp and reunite with Mal, who has just won a kind-of-underground-but-every-seems-to-knows-about-it fight. The fight isn’t in the book at all. On Netflix, it’s shown right after we see a young Mal hiding and shying away from a fight, so it serves to show how much Mal has grown not only in height but also as a person. The show also immediately shows the Grisha as asshole show-offs when one of them tries to fight Mal using his wind magic.
Behold the power of wind! Just kidding, it was slightly more intimidating in the show.
Speaking of Mal, boy-howdy is he different in the show! Now I’m not here to talk about how likeable or unlikable either version of Mal is (from some of the discourse I’ve seen online, a lot of people didn’t like book Mal) I just want to point out the differences. T.V. show Mal seems like a better friend and person in the first episode than book Mal. In the show, Mal is so happy to see Alina because they’ve been separated for months. He clearly has a thing for her and when his friends meet Alina, they start teasing Mal and tell Alina that he always talks about her. T.V. Mal also steals food from a Grisha tent and turns down the very attractive Grisha’s offer of “a tumble” to bring the food to Alina when a racist cook denies her dinner. (Fun fact: my boyfriend didn’t know that “tumble” is an existing euphemism for sex and thought that the show made it up.) Anyway, Mal seems genuinely perplexed that a Grisha was flirting with him, and when Alina gets herself and her team assigned to the mission (I’ll talk about this change in a minute), he is immediately protective and insists that Alina get off the skiff and out of harm’s way.
In the book, Mal is very different. Mal and Alina still have the easy banter of friendship—he jokingly offers to toss her under a wagon so she’s injured and can’t go into the Fold—but you can tell that she’s not his number one priority. He flirts with other women as they walk around, and when his friends come over, he leaves with them without saying goodbye to Alina. We also learn that he used to come visit her at camp daily, but this was his first visit in over a month. And in the book, it’s Alina that has the glaringly obvious crush on Mal that she tries to hide so he doesn’t judge her. It’s not that Mal doesn’t care about Alina, it’s just that she’s not portrayed as his BFF.
T.V. show Mal whenever anyone says anything.
People grow up and grow apart. The people you were best friends with as a child don’t always remain your best friend in adulthood, even though they’ll always have a place in your heart. At this point in the book, I don’t dislike Mal for not being Alina’s best friend, or for flirting with other girls. Also, I’m not saying that Netflix Mal isn’t attractive, because he is, but he’s not drop-dead-gorgeous attractive the way he’s described in the books.
Probably the biggest plot difference is that in the book, Alina is already assigned to cross the Fold along with Mal. In the show, they use it as a way to illustrate that Alina is 100% ride-or-die with Mal. Alina isn’t assigned to the group crossing the Fold, so she burns some strategically important maps knowing that the army leaders will then need to assign a cartographer team to cross the Fold. While I understand why the directors/writers chose to make this change, there are some significant holes in Alina’s plan.
One: She easily could have gotten caught. She would have been reprimanded, likely arrested, and thrown in jail. She definitely wouldn’t have been able to travel with Mal and would likely have ruined her life.
Two: It looks like she wanted to play it off as an accident, yet she had to search around for the maps, and then she burned them and placed them in a metal bin. There is no way that looks accidental, and the fact that no one questioned it is more of a plot hole than a vindication of Alina’s plan.
Three: Even if she didn’t get caught, she was lurking by the tent when the burned maps were discovered and immediately volunteered for a job that literally no one in their right mind would want. This should seem sketchy to the people in charge, but everyone just goes along with it. If I were the person who discovered the burned maps, I would have a lot of questions.
Alina as she lurks right next to the tent she just burned strategically important maps in.
Four: There was no guarantee that her offer to cross would be accepted. Alina is not the only cartographer in the camp, and presumably, there’s someone more experienced who could go instead. I also love the idea that she thought they’d be okay with sending one assistant map maker to make copies of strategically important maps. She seemed so surprised when her entire group got assigned to join the mission.
The fact that Alina’s plan works perfectly is a complete fluke and kind of defies the odds. I don’t mind that they changed the plot to Alina volunteering to go when she learns Mal will be crossing. But I do wish they had come up with a more believable plan. Also, why did the camp only have a single copy of those maps? If they’re important enough to risk a team crossing the Fold for, you’d think they would have some backup copies.
Less importantly, the skiff that Alina and Mal travel on is different in the book. In the show, it’s this state-of-the-art skiff that was just built and is supposed to be the best one ever. In the book, it’s just a normal skiff and nothing remotely fancy.
The Fold
Fun fact: in college, I started writing a fantasy young adult novel, and the group the main character was a part of was called The Fold, so now whenever I hear someone say “the Fold” on this show, I’m reminded of my unfinished and probably terribly written novel. Fun times!
More differences crop up once our intrepid heroine enters the Fold for the first time.
Disney, please don’t sue me.
The first major difference in the show is the blue-light lamp. In the book, there is no source of light when they enter The Fold. In the show, The Fold just seems darker and shadowed, but it doesn’t seem pitch black. It’s difficult to tell if that’s because of the blue-light lamp or if The Fold in the show is just not meant to be fully dark. But in the book, it is made abundantly clear that it is black-out dark.
“I realized that I could no longer see the prow of our skiff and then I realized that I could not see my own hand on the railing.”
So, it’s proper dark in the book. I understand why this change was made, it would have been pretty boring to see a black screen, but it does take away from some of the horror. I think there’s a big difference between the fright of being somewhere where you can barely see, and the terror of being somewhere where you can’t see anything, not even your hand in front of your face. I think it would have been better if they had shown a brief moment of complete darkness when the blue light failed, and then we see the flame from the man’s lantern. I think it would have added to the suspense.
Since there’s no blue-light lantern in the book, there’s no very-convenient-for-the-plot-malfunctioning-lantern. In the show, we see the blue light fail, and one of the men panics and lights a lantern. This light is what attracts the Volcras, and when the man is snatched away, his lantern falls and lights the deck on fire, causing even more Volcras to swarm the skiff and attack. In the book, there’s no given reason for the Volcras to attack, although maybe they could sense that Alina was a sun summoner and therefore a threat? In the novel, they’re sailing smoothly along, and then suddenly, they can hear the rhythmic flapping of wings. A moment later, the Volcras are upon them. There are hundreds of them in the book, but in the show there don’t seem to be that many. The Grishas send streams of fire after them and the soldiers fire their rifles.
The last minor difference is what happens to Alexei. In the book, Alexei is taken by a Volcra and disappears into the dark. In the show, Alexei decides to jump off the skiff and into the darkness rather than stay on an on-fire and under-attack ship. Alina calls after him and seems distressed that he chose to leave the “safety” of the skiff, but if I were in Alexei’s shoes, I probably would have done the exact same thing.
The reveal of Alina’s sun summoning powers is pretty similar in the book and the show. The only difference I really felt is that Alina’s and Mal’s friendship and bond felt stronger in the show than it did in the book. I got the sense that if Mal hadn’t been there, Alina’s power might not have been triggered. In the book, Mal definitely played a role, but Alina also says that it was the hopelessness and the certainty of her own death, in addition to seeing Mal bleeding out, that caused something inside of her to click.
In the show, we see Alina begin to glow with a white light, and then it cuts. In the book, it is very similar. Alina’s vision is filled with a blinding white light, she feels the Volcra release her and then passes out. The show cuts to the part of the plot I’m not talking about yet, so for the purposes of this blog, the episode basically ends right after the big reveal which lines right up with how chapter two ends in the book.
Join me next time where I get to talk about Ben Barnes as the Darkling, the actor we all forget we had a crush on until he appears in a new movie or show, and we remember how unbelievably attractive he is.