Leigh Bardugo’s debut novel Shadow and Bone is—whether consciously or not—a reaction to a metaphorical shift which took place toward the end of the 19th century. Beginning at some indeterminate period between the last couple of decades of the 1800’s and the first few decades of the 1900’s a new metaphor all-encompassing metaphor arrived which at this point has become almost omnipresent. Quite literally, it is more difficult to find a work of fiction (and non-fiction is hardly immune) that does not include a reference to “darkness” as a metaphor than it is to find two works of fiction in which this metaphor is absent. Go ahead and try it. It’s actually kind of fun and once you realize just how prevalent it is, darkness as metaphor becomes one of those things which you suddenly seem incapable of escaping.
Consider Bruce Springsteen’s album, Darkness on the Edge of Town. One need hardly listen to the album to know that the title does not refer literally to a place on the outskirts of a town which is bathed in a blackness more penetrating than the rest of the locale. One knows intuitively that “darkness” in this sense is intended to reference the symbolism of the songs. Bardugo has stated in interviews that her intention in writing this novel was to approach darkness in a manner which has not be particularly popular among writers for the last century or so: as a literal element. She has even specifically referenced the controlling idea which drove the creation of the story: “What if darkness was a place?”
That is a significantly different approach from there’s darkness in this place. Darkness can exist metaphorically in a place that is brilliantly lit. A good example is the early 80’s neo-noir film Body Heat. Film noir is defied by its literally dark compositions wherein shadows and light interplay to symbolize the moral ambiguity at work. Body Heat takes place in the brilliant Technicolor exteriors of Florida. (Perhaps not literally Technicolor, but you get the idea.) Darkness has become such a metaphorical presence as a result of fiction that its power as a literal concept sometimes gets lost or subverted.
This is essential element that makes Shadow and Bone worth taking notice of because it reinvents the idea of darkness. That sounds insane, of course: literal darkness certainly never went away and is a primal component of horror. But this is not a horror novel, it is a fantasy novel. And one tends to easily overlook the longstanding tradition that darkness and light as metaphor is the foundation of all fantasy novels from Lord of the Rings to The Stand to Shadow and Bone. Except in unusual cases nowadays, however, the darkness remains fully embedded within the metaphorical. Look at this excerpt from Shadow and Bone:
“The living world had disappeared. Darkness fell around us, black, weightless, and absolute. We were in the Fold.”
These are lines which could, quite literally, appear in just about any novel written since the late 1800’s. Literally, any novel: The Age of Innocence, Catcher in the Rye, A Confederacy of Dunces, Little Fires Everywhere…and the list goes on. But within almost all of them, these lines and this concept of darkness would exist only metaphorically. “The Fold” would be a metaphorical concept. The world disappearing into a blanket of darkness would be meant only symbolically. In Shadow and Bone, however, Bardugo makes these things tangible. Darkness exists in a way that can be viscerally experience not just in an abstract way, but with the senses. The primary accomplishment of Bardugo in Shadow and Bone is to return darkness to the real world in a big way.
