★★★☆☆ Explaining the Darkling

Demon in the Wood

Leigh Bardugo, Dani Prendergast

Demon in the Wood is a graphic novel based on a short story by Leigh Bardugo that explains where The Darkling and Mother Baghra come from. It is thus a prequel to the Shadow and Bone trilogy. Read Shadow and Bone before Demon in the Wood -- but you needn't have read the rest of the trilogy.

In her acknowledgements, Bardugo asks

Is it a hero's origin story or a villain's? I've never been able to see Aleksander [the Darkling] as purely one or the other. He is a survivor who dreams of safety for his people. He is a tyrant who brutalizes and exploits those who trust him most.

The story does a good job of showing how the boy Aleksander came to be those things.

To be honest, the graphic format didn't do much for me. This is partly me -- words are my thing, not pictures -- so for me the graphic format just amounts to padding. Also, I didn't like the depiction of Aleksander and Baghra's shadow summoning magic -- it looked too solid.

So, in summary, good backstory for two key characters of Shadow and Bone, plus pictures that you might enjoy, if you're the kind of person who enjoys that kind of thing.

Amazon review

Goodreads review

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