I’ve days this before in another post The biggest fail in this trilogy is that Alina wanted to have an easy life by that I mean having none of the responsibilities and hardships the Darkling has had to deal with in order to make Grisha safe and respected.And initially you feel sorry because she’s so young,etc but then she doesn’t evolve during the course of the story and remains the same selfish and self centered character she was.I know you probably haven’t read R&R yet but when you do I would recommend reading SOC duology. I think one of the good things about these books I’d that they’re not directly connected to the trilogy. There are some cameos from some characters but otherwise it’s focused on their own plot and the hilarious thing is that at the same time it validates the Darkling’s points since nothing changes after the Fold is destroyed things actually get worse for the Grisha(if it’s even possible)and Rsvka’s in depth due to all the wars they’re fighting which makes Alina’s story absolutely meaningless and the characters ends up looking extremely selfish after die dung the trilogy constantly victimising herself instead if actually having agency.
I'm half way through R&R, I should have finished it by now but to be honest I'm not really enjoying it and it feels more like a chore reading it. But I did get spoilt on how it ends recently and that's made me even less eager to read the rest of the book lol. Just going to put a quick books spoiler alert in here for anyone who doesn't want to be spoilt.
I've seen a lot of people say that things just got worse after the fold is destroyed. I have spoken about this in another post but whilst I think aleks was wrong to expand the fold into novokribrisk and he was wrong to put the collar on alina, I think his desire to not destroy the fold is valid. It's the only thing that makes grisha useful to the king in a unique way, it requires nearly all the different types of grisha to cross the fold safely. Without it the grisha won't be useful anymore and how long until they are back to being hunted and kill within ravka on top of everywhere else. So I am actually a big supporter of let's keep the fold and instead have alina realise that her destiny isn't to destroy the fold that's just religious propaganda told to give hope to people when the fold was created. Her destiny is actually to protect the grisha. I never throughout the books got the sense that she ever really cared about the grisha. I mean sure she had a small group of grisha friends who she cared about but the grisha as a people not so much. It was more like oh are the grisha being prosecuted and killed merely for existing, burned on a stake, experimented on, kept as slaves? That's a shame, well I've destroyed the fold now so I'm going to merrily skip off to this farm with my childhood friend turned lover because naturally he's more important than an entire minority group who are suffering. Wait putting one person above an entire race of people that sounds familiar, oh right, baghra.
I just find alina's character arc very dissatisfing and was disappointed to find she ends the books series on the exact same place she started it. I personally think the more interesting story would have been for her to realise that things aren't as simple and black and white as she wants them to be and for the darkling to get a little bit of redemption and for him and alina to work together to better the lives of all grisha.
