Ruin and Rising

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2014

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-7

Chapters 8-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapter 16-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Prologue-Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue Summary: “Before”

Alina Starkov, a girl who possesses the power to summon light, is confined underground by a religious leader of her country Ravka after she is weakened by a battle with her nemesis the Darkling. (The battle takes place in the previous book of the series, Siege and Storm.) In contrast to the first-person narration of the rest of the chapters, the prologue and epilogue use a third-person point of view to narrate Alina’s story. Led by a religious leader known as the Apparat, many of the oppressed people in Ravka revere Alina as a saint and are willing to create an army to challenge the military forces of their country. The Apparat has imprisoned Alina underground to try and control her, and Alina has discovered that she cannot summon light anymore, making her weak and frail. However, eventually Alina learns to use the weakness to disguise her growing strength as she recovers from confronting the Darkling.

Chapter 1 Summary

Alina “performs” her light summoning in front of a crowd of worshipers at a service led by the Apparat. Due to her weakened state, the performance is a ruse created by other Grisha who help Alina appear to summon. Afterward, Alina tries to get the Apparat to agree to let her go aboveground, where she could use her power to heal herself. The Apparat refuses, citing Alina’s safety, and Alina knows that she does not have the ability to free herself. She observes the people who have flocked to her army training to fight, and she sees her childhood best friend, Mal, helping the non-magical soldiers fight the Grisha trainees. Alina has romantic feelings for Mal, and the two have a tumultuous relationship that swings between a close, intense bond and tension as Mal comes to distrust Alina’s magic over the previous two books of the series.

Now, Mal has a curt interaction with Alina and the Apparat, and Alina proceeds on to the underground archives where she has been tasked with trying to find out where the third of three amplifiers that will enhance her summoning power is located. It’s a hopeless task, and she wastes time until she can see her friend Genya, a servant who once served the Darkling but now has been mutilated by him and is loyal to Alina. Genya is a minor Grisha who can alter people’s appearance, including her own, and the Apparat allows her to work on Alina’s sickly, pale appearance. Genya herself is using a salve made by David, one of the other Grisha and an ally to Alina. Alina and Genya discover a note from David in the tin of salve that reads Today, implying a rebellion against the Apparat. However, just as they discover the note, the Apparat appears with the other Grisha who are loyal to Alina and Mal, all of whom have been injured and bound.

Chapter 2 Summary

Alina’s allies feign a plot against her so that Mal can throw explosive powder up one of the fireplace flues in the room. Meanwhile, her friends fight the Apparat and his guards. The explosion in the flue opens it up and allows sunlight from the surface to reach the room, which Alina uses to overpower the Apparat. No longer a prisoner, she prepares to greet the other inhabitants of the underground city. Realizing that Mal’s hostility in Chapter 2 was a ruse, Alina happily reunites with him.

Chapter 3 Summary

Alina gathers the loyal Grisha and tells them that she’s leaving the underground city immediately after leading a prayer service with the Apparat in an hour. Most of the Grisha agree to go with her. Mal will also accompany her, and although he’s supportive of her, their relationship remains strained.

While Alina waits for the service, she attempts to reach the Darkling through a psychic connection that was established between them in the previous book of the series. The Darkling has always been the one who controlled it, “visiting” Alina against her will, but with her regained power, Alina finds that she can now visit the Darkling as well. He reigns as the king of Ravka and invites her to reign alongside him as his equal. Alina, who knows that he would only end up manipulating and exploiting her, refuses. She leaves the Darkling, exhilarated and shaken by her ability to connect to him.

Prologue-Chapter 3 Analysis

Bardugo uses the early chapters to reinforce the toll that her battle with the Darkling has taken on Alina. Not only has she been forced to sequester herself underground, where she cannot access her restorative summoning power, Alina also finds herself in a place where she’s not sure who she can trust. The characters of Tamar and Tolya are a good example of people whose loyalties are unclear to Alina at the beginning of the story. When Alina first meets Tamar and Tolya in the previous book, they appear to be working for Nikolai but are in actuality employed by the Apparat. Thus, when Alina sees them accompanying the “Priestguards” (the Apparat’s protection soldiers) as the supposed plot against her comes to light, she assumes that they’re still loyal to the Apparat. She says that they “would not meet my eyes” (34), reinforcing the idea that they’ve betrayed her. However, Tamar and Tolya abandon the Apparat and follow Alina throughout the book, proving their loyalty to her repeatedly.

Later in the same scene, Alina has similar misgivings about all of her companions—when she can’t decipher Mal’s demeanor during the accusations,

the first real sliver of doubt entered me. I’d never trusted Zoya, and how well did I really know Nadia? Genya—Genya had suffered so much at the Darkling’s hand, but their ties ran deep. Cold sweat broke out on my neck, and I felt panic pull at me, fraying my thoughts (37).

Bardugo uses Alina’s doubts to portray her as weakened not only physically by her distance from the sun but also emotionally by her doubts. Deciding whether to trust others is a reoccurring theme for Alina, and here Bardugo uses that characteristic to create another obstacle between Alina and her success—an internal one, rather than an external barrier. Alina has also been betrayed by the Darkling in previous books after first growing to trust him, making the consequences of his actions on Alina even stronger and making her even more wary of others. Additionally, giving her protagonist internal obstacles to overcome helps Bardugo make Alina a more complex and relatable protagonist.

These chapters also introduce Alina’s psychic connection to the Darkling, a narrative feature that retains the Darkling’s emotional impact on Alina and involvement in the story, even though the two are not physically together for much of the book. Alina is so troubled by her connection to the Darkling because she fears that it means that the two are linked by more than just their magical abilities—she worries that, like the Darkling, she too is heartless and greedy for power. The narrative device of creating a connection between protagonist and antagonist is a way of examining human frailty and complexity (seen, for example, in the Harry Potter series). Like the internal faults that Bardugo gives Alina, this tension and the dynamics it creates between the characters is a way to give the protagonist a more relatable and multifaceted characterization.