Award-winning YA author Leigh Bardugo’s fantasy series Shadow and Bone has been recently adapted to a series by Netflix. When the second season dropped on March 16, fans raced through the 10 episodes with giddy excitement. However, the season has been met with backlash due to its departure from the beloved books. The decision (spoilers ahead) to have the main character and the love interest split at the end of the season triggered both thrill at what the writers may have planned and trepidation at the idea that the characters may not end up together like they did in the books.
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As an executive producer for the series as well as the author of the books, Leigh Bardugo said from the beginning of the Netflix adaptation that this series was more like a “high-budget fanfiction” than an exact replication of what was on the page. She even described the trajectory of the Netflix series as “radically different” in 2019. Her creative process for the show has revolved around her growth as a creative since she first published the Shadow and Bone books in 2012. The show has made many subtle changes that encompass Bardugo’s personal growth, including allowing Alina, the main character, far more personal agency and choice than she had in the books, which culminated in her keeping her powers at the end of the second season instead of losing them like in the books.
Bardugo’s creative process is entwined with her deep love of the fantasy genre. She stated that her advice for fantasy writers, advice that she herself follows in her creative process, is to disregard the idea of a magic system being the main facet of worldbuilding. She argues that “magic is just another kind of power” and the author should consider how it impacts the setting and characters, and vice versa, like political or economic or social power. Other elements of her writing process include letting the first draft be “sloppy” in order to get the story on the page in its purest form, and to read outside of the genre you’re writing in. Bardugo’s storytelling examines the way characters are influenced by and can influence the power systems in their worlds, which comes across even more directly in the changes she made in the Netflix series. She feels that her writing is “braver” now than it was when she began and is glad it can allow her characters to shine brighter than before.
Works Cited
Edwards, Beth. 2016. “San Diego Comic Con Interview with Leigh Bardugo, Author of Crooked Kingdom! – YA Books Central.” Yabookscentral.com. August 9, 2016. https://www.yabookscentral.com/san-diego-comic-con-interview-with-leigh-bardugo-author-of-crooked-kingdom/.
The New York Times. 2023. “Leigh Bardugo Is Wary of Imposing Limits on Young Readers,” 2023. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/05/books/review/leigh-bardugo-books.html.
I really love both this show and the books, and I'm glad you wrote a blog post on it. It's interesting to hear about Bardugo's creative process and how she views power in her stories- I feel like it's easy to see that she views magic as power if you analyze her works a little. I'm glad that she said it was like high budget fanfiction. Oddly enough, it's much more enjoyable in my opinion to treat them as separate works so that I'm not disappointed that the show isn't exactly the same as the books. I think that trying to conform to existing media can dampen creativity, and this show is definitely creative if not original to the source material.
ReplyDeleteOne of the biggest debates in media is often the adaptation of books to movies or TV series. It is refreshing to see an author/producer who is not afraid to switch things up. It shows their true love for their work and less that they are motivated by existing success that they already have. The need to tell a new telling of a similar story shows that the author is willing to grow and change their work. Nothing is perfect and it is interesting to see where this series will continue to go.
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