Nikolai rescues Alina and her friends from the attack and whisks them to a hidden mountain fortress in one of his flying airships.Īt the fortress, Alina reconnects with Baghra, who helps her continue developing her summoning power. After failing to find Nikolai, deserters from Ravka’s army attack the group and turn Alina in to the Darkling. However, Alina can only follow a hunch about where to find Nikolai because he has gone into hiding after narrowly escaping an attack by the Darkling and ferrying his parents and Alina’s mentor, Baghra (the Darkling’s mother), to safety. Nikolai is the only surviving son of the Ravkan King and Queen, and he wants to reclaim the throne for his family. Once they emerge from the tunnels, Alina, Mal, and the Grisha try and find one of their allies, Nikolai Lantsov.

The group makes its way to the surface, dodging tunnel collapses along the way. With the help of the loyal Grisha who followed her underground and her childhood best friend, Mal, Alina regains her summoning powers and intimidates the Apparat into letting her and her companions go. Despite the inability to use her powers, Alina and the Darkling have a psychic connection that either of them can initiate due to the melding of their powers during their last battle. Alina suspects that he would try and make her his puppet, and she distrusts him. The underground city is under the Apparat’s control, a religious leader who once served Ravka’s king and who now wants to enthrone Alina. Alina wants to defeat the Darkling but is weakened underground by her distance from the sun and by the aftereffects of a battle with the Darkling at the end of the previous book in the series, Siege and Storm. Aided by shadow soldiers he has created, the Darkling has claimed the throne of Ravka, usurping the former king and queen. She is a counterpart to the Darkling, her nemesis who can summon and control darkness.

Alina is a powerful Grisha (magician) who can summon light from the sun and stars and use it as a weapon.

Ruin and Rising begins with Alina Starkov, the series protagonist and narrator, living in an underground city accessed by tunnels beneath her homeland of Ravka.

Book 3 shadow and bone