Shadow and Bone
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50 free Shadow and Bone trivia questions with answers — literature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Shadow and Bone opens with a young soldier who discovers, at the worst possible moment, that she can summon light. Leigh Bardugo's debut grew into the Grisha trilogy, a run of best-selling companion novels and a Netflix series, and its mix of imperial pageantry, dark magic and a villain readers cannot quite hate has kept fans arguing ever since. This quiz covers the whole trilogy: Shadow and Bone, Siege and Storm and Ruin and Rising. Expect questions on Alina, Mal and the Darkling, the Little Palace and the people who train there, the Shadow Fold and what lives inside it, the hunt for the amplifiers, and how the story ends. A handful of questions step outside the pages to the author and to the cast and making of the screen adaptation. It is written for readers checking how well they remember the first book before a reading quiz or a class discussion, for book clubs, and for viewers who came to the story through Netflix. Easier questions come first and the harder ones later, and every answer has a short explanation. Later questions give away twists from the second and third books, so finish the trilogy first if you want to stay unspoiled.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which actor, Prince Caspian in the Chronicles of Narnia films, plays the Darkling in Netflix's Shadow and Bone?
Ben Barnes
Ben Barnes is also a singer: his debut single, 11:11, came out in September 2021, a few months after the show's first season.
Q 02Which winged, flesh-eating monsters attack the First Army's crossing of the Shadow Fold at the start of Shadow and Bone?
Volcra
Volcra were once ordinary people: they lived on the land the Fold swallowed, and its creation twisted them into blind, clawed predators.
Q 03By which title does Ravkan history remember the Grisha who created the Shadow Fold in Shadow and Bone?
The Black Heretic
The Black Heretic proves to be the Darkling himself: he has faked his death again and again, posing as his own descendant for centuries.
Q 04Which magical animal of Ravka's far north does the Darkling kill to make Alina Starkov's collar in Shadow and Bone?
A stag
A stag: Alina finds it first but cannot bring herself to kill it, and that act of mercy is what later lets her break the Darkling's hold on her.
Q 05Linguist David J. Peterson built languages for Netflix's Shadow and Bone after inventing Dothraki for which series?
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones gave Peterson his break: HBO needed a Dothraki language, turned to the Language Creation Society, and he won the resulting contest.
Q 06Netflix's Shadow and Bone filmed its palaces and city streets in and around the capital of which European country?
Hungary
Hungary stood in for Ravka: Festetics Palace in Keszthely played the Little Palace, and Budapest's Ethnographic Museum became the king's hall in the Grand Palace.
Q 07What lasting change does Alina Starkov suffer after using forbidden magic against the Darkling in Siege and Storm?
Her hair turns white
Her hair turns white when she tries to raise shadow soldiers of her own, an effort that nearly kills her and leaves her too weak to summon.
Q 08Which one-word genre label did author Leigh Bardugo coin to describe her debut novel Shadow and Bone?
Tsarpunk
Tsarpunk is Bardugo's name for fantasy drawn from early-19th-century Russia, a setting she picked to take readers somewhere other than the usual land of broadswords and ale.
Q 09What do Alina and Mal quietly run together under new names at the end of Ruin and Rising?
An orphanage
An orphanage, and the very one in Keramzin where they grew up: the Darkling had destroyed it, so they rebuild it and take in children.
Q 10Leigh Bardugo, author of Shadow and Bone, opened the DC Icons novel series with a book about which superhero?
Wonder Woman
Wonder Woman: Warbringer, published in 2017, was the first DC Icons novel, and it was later adapted as a graphic novel too.
Q 11Which job does Alina Starkov hold in Ravka's First Army before her Grisha power is discovered in Shadow and Bone?
Cartographer
Cartographer is a generous word for it: Alina is only a junior mapmaker's assistant, trained beside Mal at the army post in Poliznaya.
Q 12Which uncanny talent makes soldier Mal Oretsev so valuable to the Darkling in Shadow and Bone?
Tracking
Tracking is Mal's gift: he can find anything in the wild, and the final book reveals why, since he is himself the last of the ancient amplifiers.
Q 13Under which alias does Prince Nikolai Lantsov sail as a privateer when Alina first meets him in Siege and Storm?
Sturmhond
Q 21Netflix's Shadow and Bone weaves in a gang of Ketterdam thieves from which other Leigh Bardugo duology?
Six of Crows
Six of Crows is a heist story about breaking into a high-security prison, so the show wrote its thieves a brand-new plot that crosses Alina's.
Q 22Which Ketterdam gang boss, played by Freddy Carter, is hired to kidnap Alina Starkov in Netflix's Shadow and Bone?
Kaz Brekker
Kaz Brekker walks with a cane because his creator sometimes does too: Leigh Bardugo has osteonecrosis and gave her master thief the same aid.
Q 23Which English actress, once a teaching assistant, plays Alina Starkov in Netflix's Shadow and Bone?
Jessie Mei Li
Sturmhond had his face reshaped by a Grisha crewman so nobody from court would know him, reasoning that at sea a prince is worth more as a hostage than as a captain.
Q 14Which Grisha Tailor makes Alina Starkov presentable for the King and becomes her first friend at the Little Palace?
Genya Safin
Genya Safin was handed to the Queen as a servant when her rare gift first showed, which is why the other Grisha look down on her.
Q 15Which jealous Squaller breaks Alina Starkov's rib during combat training at the Little Palace in Shadow and Bone?
Zoya Nazyalensky
Zoya Nazyalensky begins as a rival and ends the trilogy as one of Alina's allies; later Grishaverse novels even make her Ravka's queen.
Q 16Which Ravkan capital, nicknamed the Dream City, is home to both the Grand Palace and the Little Palace?
Os Alta
Os Alta is a city in two parts: peasants live in the outer town, set apart from the palaces, boulevards and gardens of the rich at its heart.
Q 17To which country across the True Sea do Alina and Mal escape at the end of the novel Shadow and Bone?
Novyi Zem
Novyi Zem is no refuge for long: after two weeks in the town of Cofton, they return to their boarding house to find the Darkling waiting.
Q 18Which priest, spiritual adviser to Ravka's king, takes an unsettling interest in Alina Starkov in Shadow and Bone?
The Apparat
The Apparat hands Alina a book of holy lives early on, then builds a cult around her that all but holds her prisoner in the final novel.
Q 19What is the name of the embroidered, bullet-resistant robe worn by Ravka's Grisha soldiers in Shadow and Bone?
Kefta
Kefta worn into combat are made of corecloth to stop bullets, and the embroidery on the cuffs tells you exactly what kind of Grisha is inside.
Q 20Which color does Alina Starkov ask to wear at the Little Palace, turning down the Darkling's offer of his own?
Blue
Blue is the Summoners' color, and Alina asks for it because she does not want to stand above the other Grisha; hers arrives embroidered in gold.
Jessie Mei Li had made her professional stage debut only months before she was cast, in All About Eve beside Gillian Anderson and Lily James.
Q 24Which actress, Madam Hooch in the first Harry Potter film, plays the Darkling's mother in Netflix's Shadow and Bone?
Zoë Wanamaker
Zoë Wanamaker was born in New York but made her name on the British stage, winning two Olivier Awards long before she was teaching Alina to summon.
Q 25By which surname is the Darkling known in Netflix's Shadow and Bone, where he commands Ravka's Grisha as a general?
Kirigan
Kirigan tests Alina in his tent in the very first episode: he nicks her forearm with a blade, and a beam of light bursts from the wound.
Q 26Eric Heisserer, showrunner of Shadow and Bone, earned an Oscar nomination for writing which 2016 sci-fi film?
Arrival
Arrival, about a linguist learning to talk with alien visitors, was adapted by Heisserer from Ted Chiang's novella Story of Your Life.
Q 27Which Ivy League university did Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo attend, later the setting of her novel Ninth House?
Yale
Yale gave Bardugo more than an English degree: she joined the Wolf's Head secret society, and the tombs of such societies inspired her ghost-haunted campus novel.
Q 28In which Middle Eastern city was Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo born before growing up in Los Angeles?
Jerusalem
Jerusalem was only her birthplace: Bardugo was raised in Los Angeles by her grandparents, with family roots in Spain, Russia and Lithuania.
Q 29Which demanding tutor at the Little Palace is revealed to be the Darkling's mother in Shadow and Bone?
Baghra
Baghra can summon darkness just like her son, and she tells Alina to run out of love for him: she wants to stop him before he is past redemption.
Q 30Which part of the sea whip, the ice dragon Rusalye, becomes Alina Starkov's second amplifier in Siege and Storm?
Its scales
Its scales are made into a fetter that Alina wears; Ravkan folk tales say the creature was a cursed dragon prince guarding the frigid Bone Road.