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In 2012 Leigh Bardugo released her debut novel Shadow and Bone, and readers couldn’t get enough. The YA fantasy adventure novel spent weeks on the New York Times bestseller list and would eventually go on to be adapted as a Netflix series. It also kicked off the Grishaverse, Bardugo’s shared continuity of YA novels.

Bardugo is glad she published Shadow and Bone in 2012, because she feels the market would never support a book like that today. “I think with every book we try to be sort of worthy of the opportunity we’ve been given,” Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo says during a spotlight panel at New York Comic Con 2022. “I think if I were trying to sell Shadow and Bone now it’s a very different market, and it’s much more crowded, and I think a much more competitive market. I like to think that I’m improving with every book but that’s why we keep pushing ourselves.”

“Shadow and Bone is a chosen one story. It’s very straight up a chosen one story. And Six of Crows is very much not. It was a direct reaction to asking what happens to the people who don’t have the grand destinies, who don’t have royal blood, who are viewed as expendable in the world.”

It’s a good thing Shadow and Bone was published when it was. If the book hadn’t succeeded, we would’ve never gotten the Grishaverse, and the YA section of the bookstore would be a less colorful place.

 Are you interested in more Leigh Bardugo? Check out our guide to learn how to read the Grishaverse in release and chronological order.