Both series take place in the same universe, but you don’t need to read the Grisha trilogy first. Six of Crows and its sequel Crooked Kingdom were published next.

The original Grisha trilogy, starting with Shadow and Bone, launched the Grishaverse. You Don’t Need to Read the Original Grisha Trilogy First 4 Reasons Why You Should Try Six of Crows 1. Television series? Not so much.īut for Six of Crows, there are other reasons to pick up the books after-or before-watching Netflix’s Shadow and Bone. Prose allows readers to spend pages, even chapters, in a character’s head. Sometimes your favorite character might have minimal screentime or maybe they don’t even show up until the second season. While television adaptations can deliver amazing visuals and breathe life into your favorite characters, they’re rarely able to feature every single detail included in the original book. Of course, there are the usual reasons for doing so. But it also gives folks who discovered the Grishaverse via the Netflix show a great reason to check out the original novels if they haven’t already. Some things will remain the same, but some things will be very different, and some things will be left out entirely. Despite the series name, however, Shadow and Bone combines two series from the Grishaverse novels: the original trilogy about Alina and the follow-up Six of Crows duology about a gang of outcasts planning an impossible heist.Īs you can guess, merging two separate series into one cohesive whole makes the Netflix show a different entity from the books. The Netflix series takes its name from the first novel of the first trilogy, which follows Alina Starkov, a soldier who discovers that she has powers beyond imagining. For those unfamiliar with the television series or its source material, the Grishaverse is a series of novels written by Leigh Bardugo. Grishaverse fans, rejoice! After a two-year wait, the Season 2 of Shadow and Bone has dropped on Netflix.

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo