Pretty good read, it wasn't the most amazing book I have ever read. It was quite solid, and I'm a sucker for fantasy and magical powers anyways. I did enjoy the Russian concepts in this although the world was a little vaguely built, forcing me to use figments of other worlds from other books to make up for the lack. For example, I was using the castle/palace from ORPHAN QUEEN as a base for my the visual imagery as well as the village aspect from KISS OF DECEPTION etc. A world overlap may have deducted some points, but it may be my own fault for reading too many books. HAHA 
 Onto Alina and Mal. They were both weak and whiny, 2-dimensional characters. Alina was pretty whiny in the beginning and not much improvement was made with that. She was quite annoying at times, but with her impressive power she is what I call - average likeable. Mal on the other hand, was a dick. We don't see much of him throughout the whole book, he just appears all of a sudden to sweep Alina off her feet. Therefore we don't really know much about him. After hurting her with so many other girls, I was pretty disappointed that Alina didn't put up a bigger fight and held her stubbornness. I'm not always the biggest fan of the push-pull, hot cold thing, but I reckon Mal deserved at least some resistance from Alina. How easily she succumbed to him was a bit of a letdown. Make him work harder for you gurl! HAHA 
 Someone I did like was the Darkling. I was straight our swooning over him after he was introduced, and his chemistry with Alina was off the charts. He seems a lot more intricate, I think he does actually have feelings for Alina, not just her power, and that's what makes him angry at himself. For feeling human emotion and jealousy. Maybe I'm reading a bit too much into this, but hey, anything for the Darkling! I was straight out shipping him with Alina, thinking that Mal was long gone, I mean she let him go at Baghra's house and he disappeared for 3/4 of the book. When I found out there was no hope in Alina/Darkling, I was incredibly shocked. 
 Anyways, well done Shadow and Bone, 4/5 will read the next installment. Still shipping Alina and the Darkling. Like calls to like, eh?