Siege and Storm

Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2013

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Prologue-Chapter 2

Chapters 3-5

Chapters 6-8

Chapters 9-12

Chapters 13-16

Chapters 17-19

Chapters 20-22

Chapter 23-Epilogue

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 13-16Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 13 Summary

The Little Palace, where the Grisha train, feels like home to Alina. Although several older, more established Grisha have gone with the Darkling, she recognizes several characters from the first novel in the series: Heartrender Sergei, his Etherealki girlfriend Marie, their Etherealki friend Nadia, Fabrikator David that Genya had a crush on, and talented Squaller Zoya. When Alina explains that she will not be Nikolai’s queen, but will lead the army, Sergei objects that she’s not qualified to command. However, Zoya, who’s never gotten along with Alina before, surprisingly declares allegiance to the Sun Summoner. When Sergei aggressively insists that the Corporalki faction should have the most power, Alina almost uses the Cut on him, though she diverts her light to take out part of the ceiling instead. She tells the Grisha soldiers she’s the only chance they have and storms off.

Her quarters are the Darkling’s old chambers, which smell like him. Suddenly, he appears and touches her, saying she cannot run from him. She instinctively throws light, but when Tolya, Tamar, and Mal come, Alina claims it’s nothing.

Chapter 14 Summary

Alina requests that each group of Grisha choose two representatives for a war council. The next morning, some argue that two from each won’t be enough, but Alina insists.

Nikolai wants Mal to go to the Sikurzoi, a mountain range on the border of Shu Han and Ravka, to see whether the Darkling is hiding there. Mal and Alina worry Nikolai is trying to separate them. Nikolai also reports that the Apparat is telling his followers that Alina has been taken prisoner by the monarchy.

Alina goes to see Baghra, the Darkling’s mother. The Darkling blinded Baghra for helping Alina. Baghra feels Alina’s new amplifier, realizes that Alina has two, and is shocked at what Alina has done. She asks Alina about the nichevo’ya, blaming Alina for the Darkling’s final slip from humanity. Alina asks about the firebird, but Baghra refuses to discuss it. She predicts Alina will lose herself to her greed for power. Alina flees in tears.

Chapter 15 Summary

Alina’s war council includes Sergei, David, and Zoya. She wonders if any of them are secretly spies for the Darkling or the Apparat.

Their first decision is that any Grisha who swears loyalty to the Second Army and the Ravkan throne will be pardoned. Next, they discuss the Apparat. Finally, Alina explains what she knows about the nichevo’ya: The only thing that destroys them is the Cut, but creating them weakens the Darkling. David hypothesizes that this is because the Darkling isn’t using normal Grisha power to make them, but merzost, or abomination. To bring the differing Grisha factions together, Alina has them all start training again with Botkin.

As Mal leaves for his trip, Nikolai begins building a new ship to replace the Hummingbird. This will get them out of Ravka if the Darkling invades.

Chapter 16 Summary

David is designing a weapon to magnify the Cut in the Fabrikator workshops. Alina asks him about Ilya Morozova and finds out that St. Ilya didn’t just discover amplifiers, he created them. Morozova played with merzost forces too; when the Black Heretic tried to replicate Ilya’s experiments, he accidentally created the Fold, killing Morozova in the process. Legend has it that after Morozova died, his son had all his father’s journals destroyed because they documented the experiments with the amplifiers. David still feels guilty about experimenting with Alina’s collar.

In the library, books that mention Morozova omit amplifiers. Alina learns how Morozova became a saint. After he healed a boy mutilated by a plow, villagers drowned him for his unusual power, but he came back to life. Tolya finds her in the library; it turns out that he can read liturgical Ravkan. He suggests looking in the royal chapel for answers to Morozova.

Mal has returned from his trip. The noblemen he was with admitted they wish they could round up all the Grisha and execute them. Mal told them a story about Alina’s childhood to humanize the Sun Summoner. Mal and Alina go to the chapel to investigate Morozova, finding a large painting of the illustration of St. Ilya, but without any of the amplifiers. Alina suddenly sees the Darkling, unscarred.

Vasily suddenly appears, and Mal hides. He dismisses his brother’s suit and proposes to Alina himself. Alina turns him down. Both princes just want to use her.

Chapters 13-16 Analysis

Alina’s rise to power highlights her positive and negative traits. Her desire to bring together the disparate Grisha factions of Corporalki, Etherealki, and Materialki is a good way to mitigate some of the internecine fighting of this order; and the steps she takes—creating a council made up of faction representatives and ordering the Grisha to train together—indicates her leadership potential. At the same time, Alina has little ability to handle dissent or confrontation. When Sergei questions her judgment, rather than winning him over with arguments or asserting her authority, she immediately resorts to magical violence.

Alina’s cruelty in that moment and Baghra’s prediction that Alina will soon succumb to her greed are intended to stoke worry that she will quickly live up to the old adage that all power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, since absolute power is what the third amplifier will give her. Rather than exploring nuanced shades of how power can be used and abused, the novel immediately gives Alina another vision of the Darkling—a warning about what she might become.

There is an interesting thread in this section about the creation of and dissemination of knowledge in Ravka. We see the lab where David, following in the footsteps of St. Ilya and the Black Heretic, is using magic. We also see Nikolai developing a new version of his flying ship the Hummingbird. This focus on industrial tinkering as knowledge production aligns with the novel’s use of 19th-century aesthetics. At the same time, readers see the different ways knowledge has been stored and can be accessed. There is a secular library in the Little Palace, which seems to have been heavily censored, as none of the sources about Ilya mention his connection to the amplifiers. There is also a church-run library in the royal palace, where harder-to-disseminate texts in obscure liturgical Ravkan contain potentially banned information (the idea comes from Church Slavonic, the official liturgical language of several Eastern Orthodox Churches). Finally, knowledge can be gleaned from cultural production, as Alina compares a painting of St. Ilya with a print of the same image in a book.