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.

Shadow and bone and six of crows