Shadow and Bone

Ravka, a kingdom modelled on Russia, has been cut in two by the Shadow Fold, a wide belt of near-total darkness where flesh-eating monsters hunt. Crossing it is a risk every soldier knows.

Alina Starkov, a mapmaker with the First Army, has never felt she is good at anything. When monsters attack her regiment mid-crossing, her closest friend Mal, a tracker, is badly wounded. Alina reveals a power she did not know she had, and it saves him.

That power takes her away from everything familiar. She is brought to the royal court and the Little Palace, home to the Grisha, the magical elite of Ravka. There they study under the Darkling, a figure of great strength and little transparency.

The court is not what it first appears, and the kingdom's hopes now rest on a girl who barely understands her own gift. Alina has to judge whom to trust while she learns what she can do. The Grisha trilogy begins here, and Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising continue it.