Leigh Bardugo
Leigh Bardugo is an author.
Leigh Bardugo was a makeup artist working in Hollywood when she wrote Shadow and Bone, and the Grishaverse has since grown to a dozen books across three sequences plus a Netflix adaptation. Six of Crows is the one readers rank highest: a heist novel with six point-of-view characters, which is a difficult structure she makes look easy. Ninth House moved her to adult fantasy and to Yale, where she studied, and is considerably darker.
Books (37)
- Shadow and Bone (2012)
- Crooked Kingdom (2016)
- Ninth House (2019)
- Siege and Storm (2001)
- Rule of Wolves (2021)
- Hell Bent (2023)
- King of Scars (2019)
- Ruin and Rising (2014)
- The Familiar (2024)
- Shadow and Bone/Siege and Storm/Ruin and Rising (2015)
- The Language of Thorns (2017)
- Slasher Girls & Monster Boys (2015)
- Wonder Woman--Warbringer (2014)
- Demon in the Wood (2022)
- Marple (2022)
- The Lives of Saints (2019)
- Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom (2016)
- The Demon in the Wood (2015)
- Better Pets (2026)
- Ninth House/Hell Bent (2023)
- Hell Bent Sneak Peek (2022)
- King of Scars/Ninth House/Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom/Shadow and Bone/Siege and Storm/Ruin and Rising (2021)
- Rule of Wolves/King of Scars (2020)
- The Severed Moon (2019)
- DC Icons Series (2018)
- Shadow and Bone/Siege and Storm/Ruin and Rising/The Language of Thorns/Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom (2018)
- The best American science fiction and fantasy 2017 (2017)
- Summer days and summer nights (2016)
- Folktales from Ravka (2015)
- Six of Crows (2015)
Where to start with Leigh Bardugo
Six of Crows is the best entry point despite not being first, and Crooked Kingdom completes it. Shadow and Bone begins the original trilogy with Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. Ninth House is the adult novel and the strongest writing she has done, and The Language of Thorns collects the folk tales from the same world.
The Six of Crows duology
A heist novel with six point-of-view characters, which is a very hard structure to hold and the reason readers rank this above the trilogy that preceded it. Start here rather than at the beginning.
The Shadow and Bone trilogy
Where the Grishaverse starts, and the books the Netflix series took its title from. They are lighter and more conventional than everything she wrote afterwards, which is worth knowing before you begin here.
The adult novels
Ninth House moved her to adult fantasy and to a fictionalised Yale, and is by some distance the strongest writing she has done. The Familiar is the recent historical one.
The short fiction
The folk tales and novellas set around the edges of the Grishaverse, several of them originally published free online. The Language of Thorns collects the best of them.
Leigh Bardugo on CrossBinge
- For fans of: For fans of Leigh Bardugo: what to watch, read and play next
- Companion guide: Academies of Magic: The Complete Guide to Magic Schools
- Companion guide: The Thieves' Guild: Rogues, Heists and the Fantasy Underworld