** spoiler alert ** 
 Book Review - Ruin and Rising 
 Author: Leigh Bardugo 
 Series: The Grisha - Book 3 
 Publisher: Indigo 
 Pages: 350 
 Star Rating: 3.5 Stars 
 Note: This review contains some spoilers. I don't recommend reading it unless you have read the book/series. 
 There is no end to our story 
 I have conflicted feelings about this book as I have had for the whole series. On the one hand - I did enjoy reading it, and I read it in basically an entire sitting, so it was obviously compelling. But on the other hand, now it's over I'm still thinking about it and not in a good way, more in a "I have unanswered questions and am confused" way. For a reader, the end of the book should leave you thinking about the book, certainly, but there shouldn't be any feelings that you missed something or that you need to re-read it now that you know the answers and might be able to pick up the clues. 
 For this book, and the entire series (actually almost everything I say applies to the entire series), I really felt like I was missing the point of Alina's involvement and now that it's over when I think "What motivated Alina - what did she want?". I can't really come to a conclusive answer. Sure, Bardugo has tried to give her a flaw, that she's motivated by greed. You can tell by the not so subtle clue she kept quoting through the entire series - 
 What is infinite? The universe and the greed of men 
 She grew up with nothing and was nothing and so the allure of being all powerful is very tempting for her. I feel like this isn't a consistent answer for her character or if it is her true character, than she made a lot of decisions that went against her character. After all, she spent most of her life suppressing her powers (consciously and then unconsciously) so that she could remain with Mal and be ordinary. Was it that she is a patriot and she wanted what was best for Ravka? I think not, to me anyway, her choices didn't seem to be that of someone who was trying to save her country or if they were, they were bad decisions for her country. 
 So at the conclusion of the book I still can't decide exactly what it was that Alina wanted. I feel like the ending of the book is supposed to be a little sad, like the characters lost something, but I just couldn't connect with it. I keep thinking, what did she lose that she wanted? What did she want? It's a haunting question, and if anyone else has some insight that I missed, I'd be happy to hear your thoughts. 
 The Darkling's ending was also terrible. I genuinely hated everything that happened surrounding the Darkling. I feel like there was so much potential there for a great character. Sometimes the Darkling was the only person who made any sense to me. He was a man who did bad things for a good reason. I think that everything in the book has indicated that he was trying to do good, he wanted to free the Grisha and he wanted what was best for Ravka. This is why it always annoyed me so much that no one even tried to talk to him. No one tried to negotiate. For the first book Alina was totally fine with him and everything he was doing and then suddenly Baghra came to her and told her he was a bad person and then suddenly he had to die. 
 I think that it's pretty logical that a war is not the best thing for a country - the obvious reason being that many people will die. I think trying to treat is the first step in the plans of every leader who has ever existed. The worst thing is that I think that if someone gave the Darkling a chance he would have gladly worked with people, especially Alina. He even said so at some points. I think that it was wonderful how Bardugo really worked hard at making him a shades-of-grey villian. I just hate how none of the other characters thought to treat him as a person instead of as a pure villain, besides Alina who only had her sympathy to offer him, not her mercy. 
 I can see that Bardugo tried to explain away the Darkling with the story of Baghra's upbringing and then how she raised the Darkling. She raised him to think he was all-powerful, alone etc etc. That's fine. She didn't say that she raised him to be cruel, she didn't say that she raised him to be cruel to humans, she didn't say that she raised him evil. She thought that he could be redeemed, and then when the redeeming wasn't taking long enough, she decided that he should die but she didn't want to be the one who had to do it. That doesn't really sit well with me. Basically, because of point (a) where Bardugo has insisted to us at every turn that the Darkling only did anything to try to free Grisha, and even the fold was a bit of a mistake made into a double mistake when the Darkling again tried to use it to free the Grisha. It just felt so conflicted to me, on the one hand we were being told that the Darkling wasn't all bad, we should be sympathetic towards him, and then on the other hand the actions of the characters were as if he was pure evil that had to be stopped at any cost. 
 I have said in my reviews of the previous books that I enjoyed the romance with Mal and all it's complexities about the power struggle between them. THIS BOOK KILLED THAT ENJOYMENT. I knew, I knew, that Bardugo would take the easy way out (they all do) and somehow make Mal and Alina equals in the end. When it [SPOILER] became apparent that Mal had to die for Alina to get the third amplifier and Alina, after a courteous amount of denial, accepted that fact I really thought that things would get interesting. I thought, wow, won't this be an unusual turn of events - the main girl killing her main man and she does. She stabs him right in the heart. I mean, sure, he wanted that, but if my husband wanted me to kill him would I do it? No, not under any circumstances expect maybe if living was insufferable for him due to some kind of incurable illness - and only as a last resort. I would literally let the entire would go to shit to have him live. I know what Bardugo was trying to tell us - Alina is greedy. Here is where she says so: 
 But what was the point of this sacrifice? Had we lived only to be a lesson in the price of greed? Was that the truth of Morozova's madness, some kind of cruel equation that took all our love and loss and added them up to nothing? 
 So I thought, ok, yeah, that's a good lesson. Alina killed the one person who truly loved her for power and as a cruel twist of fate she lost her power and the guy. Good ending. 
 BUT NO - Mal gets brought back to life. I don't really understand the lesson - you can have someone die as a sacrifice for more power, but they can be brought back to life and STILL LOVE YOU and the only price you pay is losing the power that you didn't really want anyway. Some lesson. 
 Other things that just kind of disappeared in the book but I wanted to know more about: 
 1. The Apparent was so underdeveloped, for someone who had so many (what felt like) clues, throughout the novel he was just nothing and no one. 
 2. Morozova - apparently he didn't die but no one cared about that or what happened to him. He was supposed to be such a clue and instead he could have not been in the book at all and Baghra's story taken the place of a hundred pages. 
 3. Alina's parents - there was so many questions about who she was and who her family was, how she got her power, and it was all shrugged off in a one sentence "I'll never know". 
 Besides the very obvious plot flaws and character flaws, Bardugo's writing is wonderful. It's poignant and subtle. She does wit really well - its hard to get sarcasm and dry humor to translate across a page but she does it brilliantly. 
 He dipped his hand in, then yelped and drew back. "They bite." 
 "Serves you right," I said. "Oh, look, a dark lake full of something shiny. Let me put my hand in it." 
 You can really see how her writing had improved through the books and I'm super excited to read her new series because everything I have mentioned above can be fixed but if you don't have a flair for words its hard to fake it. This entire book is extremely quotable. 
 He laughed then. "I know I'm supposed to say something noble - I want a united Ravka free from the Fold. I want the Darkling in the ground, where he can never hurt you or anyone else again." He gave a rueful shake of his head. "But I guess I'm the same selfish ass I've always been. For all my talk of vows and honour, what I really want is to put you up against that wall and kiss you until you forget you ever knew another man's name. So tell me to go, Alina. Because I can't give you a title or an army or any of the things you need."