0Shares From Alina’s childhood memories of Keramzin to the menacing Fold that pervades the characters’ lives, the first few moments of Netflix’s Shadow and Bone makes it clear that this show not only understands the source material but has successfully elevated and enhanced the characters and overall world. The series, like the books it’s based on, is compelling and propulsive, taking viewers on remarkably human and fantastical eight-episode journey. Shadow and Bone is set in a world at war. For Ravka, a fragile country inspired by Czarist Russia, hope for its people exists in the destruction of the Shadow Fold, a swath of terrible and deadly darkness that has split the country in two. Ravka depends on its Grisha—elite soldiers with powers from their practice the Small Sciences. Their abilities shift and manipulate matter to protect them and keep the darkness at bay.