Six Of Crows

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Ketterdam: a bustling hub of international trade where anything can be had for the right price–and no one knows that better than criminal prodigy Kaz Brekker. Kaz is offered a chance at a deadly heist that could make him rich beyond his wildest dreams. But he can’t pull it off alone . . .

• A convict with a thirst for revenge
• A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager
• A runaway with a priviledged past
• A spy known as the Wraith
• A Heartrender using her magic to survive the slums
• A thief with a gift for unlikely escapes

Kaz’s crew is the only thing that might stand between the world and destruction–if they don’t kill each other first.

If I’m being perfectly honest, I don’t think Six of Crows would have made it onto my reading list this year if it wasn’t for the Netflix adaptation.

Even though Shadow and Bone is one of my favorite books of all time, and I adore Leigh Bardugo’s writing style, for some reason I’ve never felt the same pull to read Six of Crows. Of course, I’ve always thought that I would give Six of Crows a try, eventually, because it is so well-loved, but it definitely was not a priority read for me. That is, until the news of the Netflix adaptation of Shadow and Bone came along, gave me a swift kick to the backside, and essentially skyrocketed Six of Crows to the very top of my TBR! 🙂

I have to admit, it took me a long while to get into this story. I didn’t enjoy the opening chapters, and I most probably would have dnf’d it except for the fact that I definitely am a ‘read-the-book-before-I-watch-the-movie’ kinda gal, so I pushed on.   And I’m glad I did, because the story did get better and better the further I got into the plot, and I do always enjoy Leigh Bardugo’s writing style. There were many cool quotes, deep themes, and witty banter sprinkled throughout the book, which I always appreciate. However, the heist was the core of the story, and although it was well plotted and interesting to see play out, I never felt as emotionally invested in the outcome of the heist as I wanted to be.

My favorite part of the story was the subplots. I felt the most invested in the romance subplots for Inej, and for Nina. But like I said, that wasn’t the main focus of the story, so it didn’t get as much “page time” as I would have personally wanted. And with Nina and Matthias’s subplot, I felt like I would have enjoyed it much more if the story had unfolded in real time, instead of it being told to us in flashbacks. And clearly I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, because that is precisely the change they made with the Netflix adaptation. Although, I felt their story was too rushed in the TV series for it to pack the emotional punch that I thought it would.

Also, the cast of characters seemed far too young for their backstories to be totally convincing for me. It felt like throughout the story I was encouraged to picture them as mature business owners, hardened criminals and ex prostitutes, experienced demolitions experts and spies, etc. But this illusion was broken every time we got reminders of how they were viewed–not only by others, but even by each other: that is, that they were a bunch of kids. Which is part of the reason that I felt very uncomfortable with the presence of brothels in this world. Felt kind of out of place in a story where the main characters are all teenagers. And the target audience for this book is also quite young. The thought of all those young kids, like Ineq, being kidnapped from the safety of their parent’s homes and forced to work in brothels against their will was emotionally unsettling to read about, even though thankfully they didn’t go into too much detail.

I was planning on reading Crooked Kingdom before I dived into the Netflix series, but in the end I caved and watched the Netflix series without reading the last book. I most probably will continue with Crooked Kingdom in the future, but I doubt it will be anytime soon. Six of Crows took me a long time to get through, and I think I need a break before diving back into the world. Although it is a world and characters I would like to visit again. LOL, except for the brothels, I really wish they would have left the brothels out of the world.