I expected to love this book. I let the hype and the many five stars from my friends get into my head and I built up this expectation for this book that, well, it just couldn't live up to it. Either that or I'm getting really critical in my old age (not that I'm old, but, y'know...) 
 Here's what this book is: standard. It's a standard fantasy plot in a standard fantasy world with a Russian twist. I will say this, though, the magic had promise, but I don't think we got enough with the magic to really know what precisely it is? I don't know. 
 Then there's Alina. Alina doesn't do much of anything. (view spoiler)[She doesn't. She doesn't consciously save Mal. She doesn't willingly go with the Darkling. Then she doesn't question anything the Darkling says. Baghra (sp? I returned my copy to the library) has to convince her to leave. She doesn't decide to hunt the stag, Mal does. She's extremely passive. Even the one thing she does do that saves her and Mal is a passive act - she doesn't kill the stag. Which, honestly, I do like that, but when her world saving action is just more in a long line of passivity, it's really frustrating. (hide spoiler)] 
 I like when my MCs do things. Especially female MCs, since there's a frustrating trend in female MCs being passive and I hate it. 
 So. I didn't hate it. I didn't love it. I might check out the second one, we'll see.