#also the end just turned into me praising language of thorns which it honestly deserves

[inej-the-wraith-ghafa]

let’s talk about about Leigh Bardugo’s book titles may sound pretty but uhh most of them don’t actually make any sense

1. Shadow and Bone - Okay, it sounds cool, and this one,,,kinda makes sense if you squint a little? the darkling has shadow powers so that where the shadow comes in, and the bone part can be referring to the antler amplifier. bit weird that alina’s light powers isn’t referenced at all because that’s the main part of the books, but overall not too bad i guess.

2. Siege and Storm - There may be a siege at the end of the book, but uh far as i’m remembering there wasn’t any storms, certainly not any with actual plot relevance. i get what she was going for with alliteration, and yeah it sounds like a pretty title but doesn’t really make sense in the context of the book.

3. Ruin and Rising - I really don’t have much to say here, it’s a pretty vague title in the first place. it’s another example of alliteration and it sounds cool, but it could to applied to almost any fantasy book and it would work as a title

4. Six of Crows - i think this may be the best title, there’s six of them and they’re part of the dregs gang who are repped by crows. no real problems here except that matthias isn’t technically part of that dregs but we ignoring that

5. Crooked Kingdom - look i adore crooked kingdom but to this day i could not tell you what the title means at all. i mean what kingdom are we even referring to? Kerch isn’t a kingdom, and that’s kinda where the whole book take place. the most sense i could make of the crooked part is that our main characters are all crooks, so maybe it’s alluding to that? idk man this book slaps anyway

6. King of Scars - this is the one title that actually doesn’t require any critical thought behind it LMAO. it’s about nikolai, he’s the king of scars. my issue lies with the next book however, bringing us to:

7. Rule of Wolves - “rule of wolves” sounds badass . but in the context of the book it doesn’t make that much sense? like yes it’s referring to Fjerda’s power, but,,Fjerda isn’t the only player in the novel. The key plots of the book is not just Ravka’s conflict with Fjerda but also with the Shu Han, and a even a little with the Kerch. so just making the title about Fjerda doesn’t really add up?? i feel like it would be better for the book title to be referring to ravka somehow since they are at the center of the novel

8. Language of Thorns - so language of thorns is a collection of short stories, and after thinking this one through its,,actually really clever? that is if i’m understanding this right - so in the first story there is this thornwood, where you are required to speak the truth. this is reinforced by the words in the back cover “love speaks in flowers. truth requires thorns”. So the title language of thorns implies honesty, meaning that all these fairy tales in the book are the “truth”. considering that a lot of the tales seem to start out with the premise of ordinary fairy tales but have darker/unusual twists from what would be a cookie cutter stereotypical ending, this makes a lot of sense and is actually pretty cool. i set out to critique it but nevermind, this one is an exception.

if you made it this far thank you, this post was made entirely in my head in the shower, (i was randomly thinking, huh. what does the title shadow and bone even mean? and it just spiraled from there) i mostly wrote it down to get all my thoughts sorted LMAO.