Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 5/5 cats
We are all someone’s monster
this is a very strong series-starter.
bardugo’s tor shorts are among my very favorites of all tor shorts ever, but when i read Shadow and Bone, i was a bit confused. no, i was actually shocked. it didn’t have the sparkle that characterized her shorts and i was very disappointed. i’m glad i continued with the series, however, because i thought it got better and better as it went along. which is kind of the opposite experience from most reviewers, but i’m just me.
and maybe i will just be me in this one, but i thought this was fantastic and after a bit of a slow and slightly confusing open, it turned into one of the most fun reading experiences i have had in a while. i LOVE heist stories, and this one is a particularly satisfying contribution to the genre. it takes place in the same world as the grisha series, but instead of a magical version of russia, this one opens in a similarly transformed version of holland, in a city called ketterdam.
we have a team of six, whose directive is to break into a heavily-fortified prison and smuggle a prisoner out. for a lot of money. what will happen to the prisoner afterwards, well, the team is a little split on that decision. but that can be sorted later, for now, it is mission impossible time:
A convict with a thirst for revenge.
A sharpshooter who can’t walk away from a wager.
A runaway with a privileged 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 is the thief, and the leader of the group. some of the characters have worked with him and each other in previous enterprises, but some are new to the team, so there’s already some trust issues threading suspicion through the ranks as they suss each other out. all of the characters have great backstory, including some secrets in their pasts that are affecting their behavior in the present, and some of them are operating on very personal agendas.
so there are a million things that can go wrong.
and some will!
the book is full of surprises and discoveries. everyone knows that when masterminding a heist, you can’t tell the whole team the whole plan; loose lips sink ships and all. as a result, many of the characters are on the same journey of discovery as the reader as we switch from one character POV to another, reacting to situations that seem to be spontaneous accidents or setbacks, only to realize all the very calculated gears turning beneath the larger plan. and it’s just so tight. nothing comes across as convenient or deus ex machina, nothing screams unfair. things don’t always go according to plan, but the lives they have lived individually have made them particularly well-suited to improvisation and adapting to changes in plans. it’s fast, clever, and surprising.
the heist is very well thought out, the fantasy world fully realized (although it may be confusing to people who haven’t read the other grisha books), it’s got a refreshingly diverse racial/gender/sexual spectrum that doesn’t feel like a checklist, the romance elements are justified and never take over the main story, and the characters are immensely likable.
in short, it’s spectacular. which is a relief, because if i had stood in that BEA line for over two hours with poor cranky greg (the only dude in the line), being squooshed by loud, irritating bloggers with no sense of personal space and this book had sucked, i would have been very disappointed, indeed. but thank god – it was extraordinary.
“Duping innocent people isn’t something to be proud of.”
“It is if you do it well.”
leigh bardugo, i thank you for creating a character like inej, but i do NOT thank you for that eyeball scene on page 158. shudder.
second book NOW, please!
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look, i know it’s completely unreasonable to demand the second part of a series when the first part isn’t even out for another five months, but i’m not in the business of being reasonable. i want it. now.
review TK. for now, just pleading.
